The Sins of the Son
by PheonRen
Summary: Eric finds remnants of his former life in the hands of a mousy, vampire-hating heiress. He toys with her at first, but finds her suspicions may hold truth. Strong adult themes. Eric/OC m/f very AU. MA.
1. Flat Tire

_This is a very AU fic. The True Blood world is property of Charlaine Harris and Allan Ball/HBO. I am privileged to be allowed to write in it._

_AU elements (spoilers):_

_Sookie married Bill after S3 instead of going off to Faerie-land. Eric's incident doesn't happen._

_Just as a footnote (as a header), I would like to point out that the story may start out fast (or slow), but it will definitely slow down over the next few days. Our kitchen is slated to be remodeled on the 5th, and we have to remove all of the cabinets before they can do their part. So please be patient if updates are patchy. Though, honestly, I'm always a little patchy with them, so... expect it. :p_

_This will have STRONG adult themes of fear/dominance, reluctance, dub-con, etc. Please be aware._

* * *

><p><strong>The Sins of the Son<strong>

**1. Flat Tire**

Alexis didn't like dark country roads. In fact, Alexis didn't like the country at all. And ever since her sister Haley had gotten caught up in 'vampire culture' and disappeared, Alexis liked dark country roads even less.

So how did she come to find herself standing there in the middle of nowhere looking at a flat tire on her car?

"Is it flat? Do you have a replacement?" her grandmother asked as she climbed out of the car.

"Mormor," Alexis told her, "please get back inside. I'll fix it and we'll get going. Okay?"

And that was why she was squatting at the side of the road in a dress, trying to change her car tire. Because Mormor wouldn't fly. She didn't like standing in lines. She didn't like the Earth falling away from her.

But she sure didn't mind dark roads in the middle of nowhere.

Alexis leaned hard on the crowbar, heaving with all of her strength. The nut wouldn't budge and she cursed men with impact wrenches under her breath. She tried Triple-A again, but there were no bars for her cellphone there.

She stood looking at the tire for a few minutes. There had to be a way to leverage it so that she could break the nut loose enough that it would start moving for her. She was a curator. More accurately, a cataloger. She knew what to do with books and antiquities. But the tire sat staring balefully at her as if she were a foreign invader bent on domination.

Lights came down the road, and Alexis felt fear rise. She hustled Mormor into the car, overwhelming her objections with adamant pressure.

Relieved, Alexis watched as the other vehicle passed them, and went back around to try again with the tire iron. She looked up in surprise when the other car backed up beside her before she even realized it was coming.

"Need help?" a man asked as he unwrapped his long frame from the fancy sportscar.

"No," Alexis told him, pushing her glasses back up her nose.

He chuckled. "You're lying."

Before she could retort, he had changed the tire, moving in a blur. She stepped back against the car, her heart thundering and trying to climb out her throat. It was a vampire. Did he know what she knew? What she suspected?

Her grandmother climbed out of the car, and Alexis's heart sped up even faster.

"Are you one of those vampires?" she asked, excited.

"Of course," he said with a smile. "Who else would rescue such a lovely lady in the middle of the night?" he asked her, reaching for her hand and raising it to his lips.

"Mormor," Alexis admonished her. "Get back in the car!"

"She is your grandmother?" the blond vampire asked.

"Yes," Alexis said, stepping in front of her. "Please don't kill her."

He smirked slightly, raising an eyebrow. "Such an archaic attitude. Haven't you heard? We don't kill people anymore."

"Could have fooled me," Alexis growled, her mind on her lost sister.

"Alexis!" Mormor chided her. "Why are you being so rude?"

"He's not a person, Mormor," she answered. "He's a vampire. They don't care. We're just food. You're just food."

"Alexis Montrose, you were raised better than that! You apologize right now!" she snapped her cane on the ground.

"Do not be concerned," the vampire said. "Her attitude is not new. We have come to expect it over the centuries."

"That's no excuse!" Mormor told him. Then she turned to Alexis, "You apologize, young lady!"

"I won't!" Alexis told her. "A vampire ate Haley, Mormor!"

She gasped. "What? That's not true! That's utter rot! Now you tell that handsome fellow that you're sorry!"

"You're very cheeky for someone who's so afraid," he said, smiling at her. It was not a nice smile.

"She doesn't mean it," Mormor said. "She's been like this since her sister took off. Girl ran off and got married, or I miss my mark." She took him by the arm and waddled toward his car with him. "What's your name, young man?"

"I'm Eric Northman, Fru," he answered her.

She positively beamed at him, and Alexis bristled.

"You know Swedish," she said. Fru was Swedish for 'madam' or 'lady', as Alexis knew all too well.

"He probably knows everything, Mormor. He's probably a thousand years old and been everywhere. So what?"

He smiled over his shoulder at her. "You're right. I am a thousand years old." He turned back to her grandmother. "And I was born and raised in Sweden. I guessed you might be Swedish when your granddaughter referred to you as Mormor. Which is, of course, Swedish for 'grandmother'."

"No!" she gasped, clearly delighted to learn he was raised 'in the old country'.

"Mormor, we must go," Alexis said, desperate to get her away from this dangerous man.

She tried to pull her away, but Mormor snapped her cane on the ground. "Stop this immediately!" she commanded Alexis.

Desperate, Alexis said, "But Mormor, he will eat you! He's glamoring you or something! We need to go!"

"Ah, she is wrong, as I will certainly not a eat a dowager as lovely as yourself," Eric said to Mormor, kissing her once more on the back of the hand. "But she is right. You should go. It is not a safe time to be out and about. I have things to which I must attend, as well, Fru."

Alexis bundled her Mormor into the car and started for the other side. She ran straight into a tall, masculine wall. She made a small sound of terror, before her arms were caught in an uncompromising grip.

"What proof do you have that your sister was 'eaten' by vampires?" he asked, stressing the word 'eaten' with a snide inflection.

"None, but I know it's true," she told him, trembling slightly.

"You are smart to be afraid," he told her. His teeth snapped out and she almost wet herself. "Do not make accusations for which you have no proof in future," he told her, his eyes glittering in the darkness.

Then he was gone and in his car and she was gasping for breath. From inside the car, Mormor waved jovially at him, not privy to the fact that he had just threatened Alexis for telling what she knew to be the truth. She hurried around to climb into the car and start it up.

She had never liked dark country roads. Now she hated them. She drove down the road, determined that she would never drive through Louisiana again. Next time that Mormor wanted to go to Florida, she could take a Greyhound bus. Or something.

Though she knew she was lying to herself. There wasn't a thing in the world that she wouldn't do for Mormor.

"I am so angry with you. What kind of heathen devil child have you turned into?" Mormor snapped at her from the passenger seat.

"Those creatures are dangerous, Mormor! You don't understand!"

"Alexis!" she sounded horrified. "What is wrong with you? Did you just call that sweet young man a creature?"

"He's a thousand years old, Mormor! He's older than you are! You can't call him a young man, he can practically call you an infant!"

"I am disappointed in you, Alexis. I've never seen you treat another person like that in my life. Of everyone in the family, I thought you had the grace to continue the family legacy."

"He's not a person, Mormor! He's a monster. He's a killer. No matter how pretty the package is, you have to remember that he has killed people. Probably multitudes of them!"

"He did what he had to in order to survive!" Mormor argued. "Just as we all would."

"Really? You would kill people? Because I wouldn't," Alexis snapped at her.

"Wouldn't you? Would you let someone kill me and not kill him first?"

Alexis sighed. "It's not the same thing, Mormor. That's protecting someone you love, not just getting hungry and snacking on a person! He should eat a cow or something!"

"How do you know they can? What if cow blood isn't compatible with their physiology? You're not thinking like a scientist," Mormor snapped at her.

"I'm not a scientist, I'm a curator!" Alexis argued. "I don't know if they can eat cows, but I know they didn't have to eat Haley!"

"You don't know that a vampire ate Haley." Mormor told her. "You are just assuming that because you are prejudice."

"I'm not prejudice, Mormor. They're killers. They kill people and eat them. How can I be prejudice if I just state the facts?"

"That's what they used to say about negroes." Mormor snorted. "And they were wrong then, too."

"You can't call black people 'negroes' anymore, Mormor. It's racist."

"Fiddlesticks. How can I be racist if I just told you to stop being prejudiced?"

"It's not the same, Mormor. It wasn't that long ago that some vampire killed an anchorman right on national TV. In front of everyone. At least he was honest about what vampires really are."

"I'm ashamed of Katherine and I'm ashamed of you. I thought I raised her better and I thought she raised you better." Mormor turned to look stubbornly out of the window and refused to speak to her again for the entire drive home.

Alexis went to work the next day, and had a nightmare the next night of vampire fangs and a blond Swede chasing Haley through dark alleys and down midnight-dark country roads.

But time passed, and she forgot about the incident on the road in Louisiana. Her life marched on in its endless line of new artifacts, she restored books, and she cared for Mormor.

"So didn't you get a new head curator over at the museum?" Mormor asked her one day.

"Yes, Mormor. No, I'm not dating him. He's fifty and married."

Mormor pursed her lips. "You shouldn't be alone, älskling." It was Swedish for 'darling'.

"Mormor, must we talk about this? I'm fine. I'm happy. What more do you want?" She sighed and put the book she was reading down.

"You can't possibly be happy," Mormor dismissed the very notion. "You are miserable. Just look at you. Your clothing is drab, you wear your hair the exact same way every day, and you even buy clothes that all look alike. No woman who is happy acts like that."

"Mormor, please stop meddling. If I'm meant to be with someone, I'll find him."

"Men in books make bad bedfellows," Mormor told her.

Alexis blushed. "I am not going to talk about men and beds with my grandmother."

"I'm a hundred and seven years old, girl. I know all about bedfellows."

"Mormor!" Alexis covered her ears. "I am not listening to you!"

"Yes," Mormor said. "I know. I'm going out today. I won't be back until later. I've asked Leon to drive me while you're at work."

"Okay. Are you sure? I can take the day off if it's urgent."

"No, no," Mormor said, standing up and leaning heavily on her cane. "You don't want to miss your date with your book men."

"I love you, Mormor." Alexis got up and gathered her keys and coat.

"I worry about you, child. One day you're going to wake up old and alone and realize you've wasted your whole life."

"I'm doing what I love, Mormor. I'm happy. I promise."

She snorted her obvious disagreement. "You're hiding from life, is what you're doing. Promise me you're try harder."

Alexis sighed. "Mormor, please. I'm happy."

She went out the door and off to work.

A week later, Mormor was dead, and Alexis sat at her grave long after the others had left. She had cared for Mormor for the last ten years. Somehow, she hadn't really believed she would ever die.

But she had, and she had been all Alexis had left. It was dark before she got up and walked to her car and drove home to Mormor's cold, empty house. She thought she might never stop crying.


	2. Terms and Conditions

**2. Terms and Conditions**

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's the only available time," the woman at the other end of the line said. "The other parties must be present for the reading of the will, and the gentleman is from out-of-town."

"Very well," Alexis said. "Where would he like to meet?"

"Preferably there at the house, ma'am."

"I don't think that's wise," Alexis said. "Isn't there-"

"They will require access to the home regardless," the woman said. "So if you cannot open the home, another time will need to be set. You will be required to vacate the premises until the reading of the will is complete."

Angry, Alexis sat rigid for a few minutes. "Very well," she said, short and precise. "Tomorrow, nine pm." She put the phone down, angry but as controlled as ever. Wretched woman, she thought.

The next day, she went to work. She had never missed a day, and hadn't since Mormor died. But she found it hard to work and even harder to focus. What possible 'parties' could their be? There was only Alexis. Leon might have been left something, but Alexis knew that Mormor had left the majority to her.

That evening, she paced the house until eight fifty, when the doorbell finally rang. She opened it and invited the officious looking attorney inside. Then she gaped in astonishment. Behind him, leaning casually against her front porch support, was the same vampire they had encountered on the road.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" he drawled at her, clearly amused by her reaction.

"No," she said. "Why would I?"

He shrugged and walked past her. "I thought you wanted to hear your grandmother's will."

"You can't come in here!" she looked at the attorney. "Can he?"

"I'm afraid he can, ma'am. Please, sit down."

She perched on the edge of the sofa, as far away from the sprawled vampire as she could get. The attorney droned on at them for a while, before putting his pen down and pushing a paper toward them. The vampire sat up and reached for the pen. Alexis grabbed it before he reached it.

"Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Mormor has left him the Swedish artifacts. All of them. Unconditionally after two years. A total stranger. And she has made him executor of her estate over me? And if I can't convince him that I am offering a sincere apology within two years, then I get only the library, and everything else must be sold and split with him?"

"Your grasp of English is incredible," the vampire said. "One would almost think you speak it. Natively."

"He's a vampire. He's dead. He can't inherit," Alexis pointed out.

Said vampire grinned, his fangs snapping out. "Vampire Rights Amendment," he told her, leaning forward. "Just think, even after I eat you, you'll still have the right to open your saucy little mouth."

The attorney interrupted. "Please sign so that I can go."

"I'm not agreeing to this!" Alexis told him, pushing the paper back at him.

"It just says I read it to you and you understand it," the odious little man said, pushing paper and pen back at her.

"But I don't understand. How could she do this to me? I cared for her for over ten years, most of it alone! No one else even helped us. And she sold me to a vampire?"

"Just sign the paper so the man can leave. He's missing Spongebob," Eric told her with a smirk.

"House, actually," the man said.

Alexis picked up the document and read it. It said what he claimed it did. Simply that he had read her the terms of the agreement. She signed it, feeling as if she were giving up her entire life.

"Can't we just sell it now?" she asked.

"Talk to the Estate Executor," the attorney said, picking up the paper and quickly handing them each a copy before trotting out the door with great haste.

Alexis took a deep breath and fought to calm herself. She couldn't believe that Mormor had done this to her. She felt her life slipping out of control, and hoped that her heart racing terror wouldn't make the vampire turn on her.

"Relax," he said, making her jump. "You're like a little wind up toy that got cranked too many times."

He stood up and towered over her so high that she jumped up, just to feel a little less intimidated. It didn't work.

"So, why don't you show me these 'priceless Swedish heirlooms' of mine, hmm?"

She didn't look at him. She'd heard that they had to look in your eyes to glamor you, and she was fearful. No one knew he was here except that attorney, and she knew he would never say anything. He had run off and left her there with him.

No one else would even notice she had been eaten except her boss, who would just be irritated that she hadn't given two weeks' notice and trained the new person. Swallowing hard, she turned toward the artifact room.

"They're down here," she said.

She led the way, uncomfortable at the sound of him walking behind her. Did the person taste better, the more scared they were, she wondered? Was he playing with her like a cat with a mouse?

"In here," she gestured.

He started to walk past her before stopping. He was so close that she could smell him. He smelled like soap, laundry detergent, and an indefinable male scent that teased her senses.

"You could try apologizing. If it seems sincere, I can give you your house back."

She shrank away from him, the nightmares about her sister all coming back.

His fangs snapped out. "Apologize, Alexis. It's not hard. Just say you're sorry for acting like a bigot."

"I'm sorry," she said softly.

"Try looking at me when you say it. Or should I say, stop staring at my chest and look in my eyes when you say it."

She shook her head. "You're going to glamor me and kill me," she said softly. "I'm not going to make it easier for you."

He snorted. "I don't want you any more than human men want you, Alexis. You're more dead than I am." He dropped his arm from the door frame beside her and wandered into the room.

As he wandered, he stopped suddenly. She walked over to look around him. It was the wooden box.

"That was one of her favorite pieces. They think it was used to hold tobacco or maybe-"

"It was used to hold the flints for starting the fire or lighting the candles," he cut her off.

"You had one like it?" she asked. "It's beautiful work. They've tried to reproduce it, but it was made by a master craftsman. Such work can't be done even by a machine. Only a truly talented-"

"He was a master craftsman. He was also the King," he interrupted her. He picked the box up and ran his hands over it. "He was my father."

"So you're a dead prince, then? Does that mean you're going to change your name to a symbol and..." She looked away when he turned a glare on her. "Sorry, sorry. I'm sorry about your dad," she said finally. Did a person still miss his dad after a thousand years? Or a vampire, anyway?

"You don't get out much, do you." It was a dry observation.

"You're my first vampire," she told him. "Anyway, your stuff's all in here. Good night."

"Don't you want my contact information since I now control everything you're standing in?" he asked.

She sighed. "No. In two years, everything will be sold either way. I'm not sorry that I know the truth about you and your kind, so I'm never going to be able to convince you that I am. My own grandmother threw me under the bus. I'll have to thank her for it when I get to hell with her."

"So I'll call you, then," he said, turning back to looking at the artifacts in the room.

She couldn't get away fast enough. Though, she realized, part of that was because she was embarrassed. She hadn't meant to make jokes right after he discussed his dead father. Who knew how vampires felt about their lives.

Though why she should care was beyond her. Who knew, maybe it was even him who killed Haley. She went to her room and waited for the alarm to tell her that he had gone. Finally, she fell asleep, hoping the locked door to her bedroom would hold him off if he got hungry.


	3. Precautions

**3. Precautions**

She got up at her customary five in the morning to work out. Mormor would be up at six, and she had to make her breakfast. Except... she wouldn't.

But Alexis got up and exercised anyway. She would make her own breakfast and go to work. She saw the door to the artifact room standing open still and sighed. Was the vampire raised in a barn?

She went down and started to close it, then noticed that he had left a couple of cases open, too. Walking inside, she carefully closed the first one, shutting her eyes against the loss. These artifacts were part of her family's history, and Mormor had thrown them away.

"Leave them-"

She jumped and her heart raced. He was still there. No wonder the door stood open still.

"I will close in a bit before I go find a dark room to rest in," he finished after giving her a second or two to recover from her startle.

"What are you still doing here?" she asked, trying not to be snide.

"Reliving the past," he answered. She saw him leaning casually back in a chair.

"I see that you found two of the pieces. There's another. I'll show you."

"Why?" he was so close when he said it that she felt the breeze of his arrival and then of his speech.

"I just thought you might like to see it." She shivered at his proximity.

"Then by all means, show me everything."

She walked over to open the curtains around the ancient chair. "We keep it in the darkness to slow the decay," she told him. "Please close it back up when you're finished..." Then she remembered that it was his now. "If you wish," she added.

He wasn't looking at the chair, though.

"Why are you dressed like that?"

She straightened. "I was exercising, if you really must know."

"With your hair in a bun?"

"Yes."

"Do you sleep with your hair in a bun?"

She scowled. "None of your business!"

"You need to lighten up. And get your hair done. I think Pam would faint if she saw that mess. Not a highlight in sight." His finger under her chin tilted her head up. "Never any makeup?"

She pulled away from him. "I am not a dress up doll for your girlfriend. Please take your things and leave."

"It's half my house."

She took a deep breath to ease the pain those words brought. "Very well. I will leave. Within the week."

"Prickly, Alexis. Very prickly."

He turned and looked at the chair finally. To her surprise, he lifted the heavy, thick glass box off of it as easily as if it were a tiny little bauble. "That is my father's chair. It would have been mine if..."

He knelt in front of it, running his hands across the ornate wood working on it. "How did your Mormor come to have it in her possession?" he asked.

"It's been in our family for generations. The clan it once belonged to was a friend to our family's clan. They took in the remainder of their people and sheltered them. These were to be kept for the lost prince—you, I guess—but he never returned. They just kept keeping them."

His head drooped against the chair. "Leave me," he commanded her.

She left, closing the door quietly behind her.

She went to work and picked up a newspaper on her way home. Though she knew she had to quit thinking of it as 'home' at all. When she got there, she made herself some dinner and sat down at the table to eat. She opened the classifieds and started looking for apartments.

"What are you doing?"

She had heard him this time, so his voice was not as unexpected. "I'm finding an apartment."

"Why?"

Without looking up, she said, "Why do you think? Even if you're not going to be here, which apparently you are, there's still the fact that this is no longer my home and never will be again."

"You are determined to believe the worst of me, aren't you?"

"Can you tell me that there are good reasons for me to trust vampires?" she asked, still not looking up, though not quite seeing what she was supposedly reading, either. "If it were any other vampire, would you encourage trust?"

His silence was answer enough. He stood beside her and pointed at the newspaper. "You should try this one."

"That's a man looking for a roommate," she said, irritated.

"You should jump on it, it may be your only chance to ever live with a man."

"Wow, you're a real charmer," she told him. "Did you go to school to learn how to be such a complete dick, or is it inborn?"

"All part of my vampire charm," he answered. "There will be men here tomorrow to install a new security system. As paranoid as you are, I'm surprised you have nothing at all."

"I have a gun," she told him.

"Can you use it?" he asked.

She knew her silence was answer enough, and after a moment, he scoffed. "Guns are no use to those who can't fire them."

He grabbed one of her rolls and began tossing it back and forth from hand to hand. "So why do you work out? Are you harboring fantasies of snaring the postman?"

"Postman? Who calls them 'postmen' anymore? And no, not harboring anything. I like to be healthy. Please don't play with my food." She wondered again if he was raised in a barn. Then realized that he was probably raised in the next best thing—an ancient longhouse.

He dropped the bun back into the pile and she sighed.

"Are you a germophobe? Do you expect to catch vampirism from my buns?" he asked her.

She tried not to quirk a grin at that. "I'm a neat person, Mr. Northman. I like things tidy and organized. That generally includes cleanliness."

She put the paper down. "There is an alarm, by the way. It's in my room. It tells me when any door or window on the premises opens. I made Mormor put it in when she insisted on moving the artifacts here."

Picking up the buns, she started cleaning up the table.

"I'm impressed. I didn't give you enough credit," he told her.

She shrugged. "I do care about those artifacts, and I cared about Mormor. I wanted to protect both. Anyone who would break in to steal them would no doubt harm her, too."

"And you," he said.

She chuckled. "You said it yourself. Not even living men want anything to do with me."

"It doesn't bother you? Don't you ever think about going on a date or having sex?"

"No. I had Mormor for conversation and sex is over-rated."

"How would you know?" he asked with a cheeky grin.

"I was young and stupid once. I'm not a thirty year old virgin, vampire."

"So you don't trust vampires and you don't trust men. Is there anyone you do trust?"

She sighed and her heart constricted. "Not anymore. And in the end, even she tossed me out a second story window to the vampires."

"Is it as bad as all that?" he asked.

"I'm going to bed," she told him. "Good night."

"Alexis." When she stopped, turning her head slightly to listen, he went on, "I have a name, you know."

"Yes, Mr. Northman, I know. I read the will."

"Call me 'Eric'," he told her.

"No," she said, leaving him sitting in the dining room.

She cried that night, hurt that Mormor had left her to the mercies of a stranger. But worst of all, she missed her too much to dredge up the anger that she felt the deed deserved.

The next morning when she returned from jogging, the house was abuzz with activity. She stared in consternation at the men swarming the walls with ladders and the workman at the door who was clearly replacing the locks.

"What is all this?"

"Beefing up the security system, ma'am. You're going to need keys," he told her. He dug around in his pocket and handed her two sets of keys. "The man sure wants to protect something in here."

She crossed her arms. Clearly, he meant it couldn't possibly be her. "Yes. He should have dolled me up a bit first, because now the thieves are going to wonder what the real treasure is."

"Sorry, ma'am, I meant no offense. It's just that he's spending a pretty penny to finish up the alarm system install."

"Whatever," Alexis said, skirting past him and into the house.

She went to work that day angry and sad. She'd meant what she said. Now thieves would have reason to wonder what was in her house. The alarm system she'd had was adequate and had just appeared to be a simple self-protection measure for a little old lady and a hermit woman.

The vampire had just put a huge target on her grandmother's house.

That night, she called the cell number he had left her in a note on the table. When he answered, she shivered. His voice was different when he wasn't with it. He sounded so warm and human.

"You have shown the thieves that there's something in this house worth breaking in for by putting in such a huge security system," she accused him. "Those artifacts have been in this house for eighty-five years without such measures because no one thought there was something valuable here to break in for!"

"Those items belonged to my father. I will ensure that they are well protected, and I do not need your permission to do so," he said, the cold vampire back in full force, even over the phone.

"You are wasting my grandmother's money to put in security measures that would never have been necessary if you hadn't put such a huge advertisement on the house-"

"I did not spend any of your precious money," he cut her off. "Those are my things, and I am using my own money to care for them."

"Mormor would not have wanted-"

"I do not believe that you knew your Mormor very well. She was a truly stora fru," he said, meaning 'great lady', "while you are a termagant."

She held the phone away from her face, staring at it. Nobody said 'termagant' outside of literature.

"That's not true," she said. "I'm not violent-"

"I'm sure you'd happily kill me if you could get away with it," he told her.

"I don't kill people!" she objected.

"Of course you don't. But then, you don't think I'm a person, so that certainly wouldn't stop you." The phone beeped with a lost call signal and she laid it down into her lap, closing it quietly.

Her Mormor's words echoed in her head. "I am disappointed in you, Alexis."

"They killed Haley, Mormor," she whispered. "I know they did. I know I can't prove it, but I know they did it."

She got up and went to bed. When she woke in the morning and worked out in the weights room, she realized that Mormor was gone and she had promised herself that after Mormor was gone she would find proof that the vampires had killed Haley. But she had no idea how to go about it.

Finally, she decided that she had to go to that vampire bar that Haley used to go to all the time over in Louisiana. It was an hour drive, but it was the closest vampire bar in the area, and Haley had gone there frequently.

Trembling, she walked into Haley's room. She began to go through her clothes to find something that wasn't all the way over the line into slutty, but that didn't have the same conservative, brown-and-gray look that Alexis generally kept to for herself. Mormor had never let her put Haley's things away, stating that she would be back someday. Alexis was glad now that she hadn't pushed the issue.

She sat down at her sister's vanity and used her makeup. Then she went back to her own room and took out the contacts that she never wore because after a while they'd hurt her eyes.

She got in the car and turned on the Garmin, punching in the address to her very first vampire bar, her stomach tied in brutal knots of fear. She looked at her Mormor's well-lit house and hoped it would be undisturbed when she returned.

A little over an hour later, she pulled the pins out of her hair and brushed it out in the car. Then, taking a deep breath, she stepped out of the car, balancing on the stiletto heels with only sheer effort. She stepped to the door and the man there said, "ID please."

She bristled slightly. "I'm thirty years old," she scowled at him.

"You look about twelve," he replied. "Show me some ID or leave."

She got her ID out. He looked at it dubiously, then at her. Finally, he handed it to her. "You're making a mistake. You don't belong here."

She straightened up. "Humans are not allowed?"

His eyes raked her form. "Humans are allowed, but you look like dinner. And you smell like terror, which makes you that much sweeter."

"I have business inside," she told him, standing up to all five feet four inches [16.45 m] of her very not intimidating height.

He shook his head and opened the door. She walked inside. She'd only rarely ever even been in bars, and this one was little different from the few she'd been in. Except that multiple eyes turned to her as soon as she stepped in the door.

And to her shock, her eyes met familiar ones across the room. It was Eric, sitting in a chair on the stage.


	4. Investigation

_a/n: I suppose it need not be said, but just in case. _I don't want people to think I am promoting the idea that it's okay to initiate a dom/sub relationship (including, but not limited to sex) without a healthy and mature discussion first. Which is seriously lacking in the story because... yeah. Like, it's fantasy._  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>4. Investigation<strong>

Eric smelled her fear the instant the door opened. Every vampire in the room did, and every vampire head in the room turned toward the front door. He couldn't believe his eyes when they met hers.

Wide brown eyes met his in startled recognition. Her hair was down and she was actually wearing makeup. Everything about her raised his deepest vampire instincts. She was like a startled doe, her brown eyes large in her face and her body trembling with the slightest tremor of fear.

The most revealing thing he'd seen her in so far had been long baggy shorts and an oversized, thick t-shirt. But now she wore a figure-hugging pencil skirt and a shirt that clung to her body and hid nothing as the light from the lot shone through it.

As little as a hundred years ago, he would have devoured her on sight. And he knew that the younger vampires in the room would find her utterly irresistible. She would be drained before the night was through. He could not allow that at his bar.

He flitted across the room, grasping her by the upper arm. "You cannot be here," he told her, trying not to stare at her. He turned her around and dragged her out the door, ignoring it as she tripped on one of the ridiculous, sexy shoes.

"The man at the door said humans are allowed. And I know my sister used to come here! I'm going to find out what they did to her, and you can't stop me!" she jerked in his grip, trying to free herself.

Taken aback, he blinked at her. "Are you trying to tell me that she disappeared from my bar?"

"This is yours?" she demanded. He fought to control his fangs, finding his patience running out.

"Obviously," he told her.

"Then yes. Haley was eaten at your bar, and you did nothing to stop it," she said, her voice bitter and accusing.

"One would think that as terrified as you are, you would know to hold your tongue," he snapped. "You have no idea the danger you're in here."

"I'm not terrified," she objected.

He leaned forward and she cowered. "You reek of fear to a vampire. You're like a little frightened fawn, smelling of meadows and terror. In other words, you smell like..." he snapped his fangs out, "...dinner." He stepped even closer to her. "You have no clue the very real danger you are in, just because of how delicious humans smell when you're so scared you're about to piss yourselves."

He grasped her arms and held them behind her with ease. "You're just smart enough to be afraid, but not smart enough to protect yourself. You seem to have no idea just how vulnerable you really are, little doe." He took a deep breath of her sweet fragrance, pulling her against him as she began to struggle slightly, shaking her head. "Shhh," he whispered against her neck, feeling her hair cascading over his hands. It was incredibly soft and her breasts yielded against his chest, also soft.

"Let me go," she whispered.

"Oh, I don't think so, little doe. You came to my bar, offering yourself up on a platter." Her scent was intoxicating and she was so hot. Her heartbeat roared with the roll of thunder and the blood rushing through her veins called to him with its siren's song of life.

He tangled his fist in all of that hair, pulling her head backward and tasting her neck with his lips.

"Are you going to eat her right here, or were you going to shove her in the car first at least?" Pam's sarcastic voice came from behind him.

He jerked upright, feeling guilty. He had almost lost control like a newborn.

"Get in your car and go home, Alexis. You won't survive here. You should never have come here."

"But Haley-"

"Give me a picture of her, and I will look into it."

"But-"

"I promise," he added.

"I have one right here," she told him, and leaned over into the open window of her car. He groaned at the pert little ass that was pointed right at him. Long legs were exposed as the skirt rode up to just below the point of indecency.

Pam stepped up beside him and gave him a familiar look, also surveying the delights in front of them.

When Alexis stood up and turned around, she saw them both openly appraising her bottom and blushed. She first pulled the photo in against herself as if it were a shield, then thrust it at Eric. "That's the most recent one I have," she told him.

He took it.

"I don't normally like the terrified little mice," Pam said from beside him. "But I'd be willing to make an exception for you. You have a sweet, tight little body."

"That will do, Pam," he reprimanded her.

She smirked at him, then turned and walked back into Fangtasia with one last hungry look at Alexis.

He took the photo, then slid his other hand along her neck and jaw into her hair. She trembled and he fought his vampire instincts. "Don't come back here, Alexis. I won't be able to protect you. You are too intoxicating. They will swarm me to get at you." He leaned forward, almost kissing her, but not quite. "If I don't lose control and take you, myself, first."

He stepped back and clicked his fangs in. He watched her scramble into her car and drive away and stood for long moments. His cock was so hard he ached. Who would have thought she would look like that? Her glasses and her scraped-back hair had hidden her sweet, heart-shaped face and her clothes disguised her delectable little body. He took a deep breath and wondered what havoc she had played by just her few fear-pheromone laden moments in his bar.

Almost as an afterthought, he lifted the photo of her sister. The instant he saw it, his attention was arrested. She had been in his bar many times. She had spent a lot of time with Liam, who would no doubt have taken her home to Malcolm and Diane.

He scowled. A woman had vanished while frequenting his club, and he'd had no idea. That really wouldn't do. At all.

He stalked back inside, his mood now furious. Malcolm and his nest were dead, but there had been no sign of Haley. That meant that either her body had been stashed somewhere, or she was still alive somewhere. He would find out if she had been turned or not, at least.

But there was little he could do that night, he knew. So he crooked a finger at one of the dancers. She immediately stopped and stepped down, to the boos and irritation of the patrons. Eric didn't care. He would take out his unslaked desires on her for tonight, and investigate this matter the next night.

As he walked off down the hallway with her in tow, he heard from behind him, "I miss the days when they were all like that."

Eric didn't. He hated the part of himself that wanted her as much because she was afraid as because she was sexy and impertinent and surprisingly lovely when she wasn't hiding herself.

**OoOoOoO**

There could be no other word for what Alexis did than 'fleeing'. She jumped in her car and did her best to drive sedately out of the parking lot. She didn't stop shaking until she was home. She had never imagined that she would walk in and that everyone would turn to stare at her.

Many women loved being the center of attention, but for Alexis, there were few things as nerve wracking. She sat on the bed and brushed her hair, trying to shake the combination of fear and anger that boiled in her gut.

He wasn't going to do anything. He didn't care about some random human. He had probably thrown the photo away.

Unfortunately, though, he was right. She couldn't go back. She couldn't shake the feeling that he had almost killed her himself. There was no telling what had made him stop, though she was sure that the statuesque blond had been a part of it.

Maybe as a local business owner, he had to keep certain appearances. Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. He would do nothing. He'd probably buried and hidden more humans in his lifetime than she'd even met.

The next day after work, she went into her small 'office' and logged onto her computer. She did a search for "Liam vampire". To her surprise, she found a story about a vampire in Louisiana named Liam who had died with two other vampires and a 'fangbanger'.

She hadn't known there was a special name for vampire groupies. She chuckled at the idea. But she read a couple of the articles, finding one that had a photo. It chilled her to the bone. He was definitely the same Liam. He had dropped Haley off a few times on his motorcycle.

But she was at a dead end. The man was dead, along with his 'nest' as the newspapers called it. There was some comfort in the knowledge that at least Haley hadn't died in the fire with them. But it was a very small comfort.

Alexis paced. She was certain that Liam had something to do with Haley's disappearance. What it might be, she didn't know, but there was definitely linked in some way.

At last, she went to bed, stymied and disappointed. She didn't even know how to go about researching vampire culture, much less have any idea how to ask about dead vampires.

The next two days, she thought about it constantly. Now that Mormor was gone, she no longer felt she had to protect her from the truth, and she wanted to know it for herself. She couldn't let Haley go. Even though Haley had placed herself in the situation against all of Alexis's recommendations and warnings, she still felt obligated to find out what had happened and to put her to rest. Or rescue her.

Though Alexis was certain that the latter was an empty dream.

It was on the third day that she got the idea. She sat down and looked over the articles again. They referenced a Bud Dearborne and Andy Bellefleur as the investigating officers. For the first time since she had begun her working life, she called in to work and told them she wouldn't be in that day. Then, screwing up her courage, she got in her car and headed for Bon Temps.

"Hi there, Sheriff Bellefleur," she greeted the heavy, bald man behind the counter.

"Hey," he said. "What do you want?"

A bit taken aback by his attitude, she felt her smile slip slightly. "I had hoped to ask you a few questions about the vampires that burned here-"

"Don't know nothin' about them them, except they're dead," he cut her off.

"Do you happen to know if they had any known associates?" she asked.

"What are you wantin' with vampires, anyways?" he demanded.

She took a deep breath. "I think they may have killed my sister."

"Oh. Well. I'm sorry about that. No known associates, except maybe Vampire Bill. Out by the cemetery."

"Thank you," she told him, and turned to leave.

"I wouldn't go sniffin' around Vampire Bill if I was you! He ain't nothin' but trouble!" he yelled after her.

"Thank you," she called again, letting the door close behind her.

But it was too early to go and question him now. So she drove around, finally asking the Garmin to find her a restaurant. She found herself in the parking lot of Merlotte's Bar and Grill a few minutes later. Shutting the car down, she hid the Garmin and locked it.

Inside, she was greeted by a bouncy blond waitress who intimidated her as much with her excessive animation as her flagrantly strong personality. Then again, Alexis found pretty much everyone intimidating.

She ordered an ice tea and a grilled reuben on rye. When she was finished eating, she checked her watch. It was hours until sundown. She decided that she just as well go home and come back.

"Pardon me," she asked the waitress as she picked up the check. "Do you know who Vampire Bill is?"

"Well sure," she said. "Everybody does."

"Can you tell me where to find him? All the Sheriff would say was 'at the cemetery', which seems a little vague."

"His is the really big house," she said. "With all the lights." She cocked her head, "May I ask what you want from Bill?"

"I only wish to speak to him about some associates of his. Well, one in particular. A vampire called Liam."

The blond's smile vanished. "He's dead. They're all dead. And good riddance, too, I say."

"Yes, I know. But I think... they might have had something to do with my sister's disappearance. I just want to ask him if he knows anything about her or ever saw her with them."

"Well, I doubt he does. But when you go up there, just tell them at the gates that Sookie sent you. They'll let you go in."

"Okay, thanks," Alexis smiled at her. "I appreciate it."

"Sure thing," she said, bouncing away, ponytail swinging.

Alexis wondered what on Earth she was talking about, but she stored the name away for her visit to Vampire Bill.

A few hours later, she pulled up in the driveway of what could only be considered a mansion. Getting out, she walked toward the front doors, her heart in her throat. This was going to be harder than she could ever have imagined. But what if Haley was alive and needed her?

"Excuse me, ma'am, you can't go in there."

"I need to speak to Vampire Bill," she told the man in black.

He spoke into a mic on his shoulder. "He's not receiving guests tonight, and he was not expecting you," he told her. She tried not to react to his unflattering description of her.

Taking a deep breath, she said, "Sookie said that if you wouldn't let me pass, to tell you that she sent me."

He spoke into the mic again and then stepped aside. "Please do go on," he told her.

She walked through the double doors and another black-clad man gestured at a second set of French doors. Steeling herself, she knocked.

"Enter," came the masculine voice from beyond the doors.

She opened the door and slipped inside the huge office. A man sat behind a massive desk, his dark hair glimmering in the light of the lamp. His fangs snapped out, and he looked away, covering them.

She fought the overwhelming impulse to run screaming into the night.

"Forgive me," he said. "I had no expected you to be so frightened. I will not hurt you." He got his fangs under control and gestured at a chair. She perched on it and he continued, "So why has my wife sent you?"

She blinked. "She's your wife?"

"Indeed," he said with a smile. "I am fortunate that she agreed to marry me. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Did you know a vampire named Liam?"

"I did," he replied. "He is dead, as are the others of his nest."

She took a deep breath, her stomach boiling with fear. "I believe he may have been responsible for my sister's disappearance," she told him.

He raised an eyebrow. "That is a very serious accusation," he told her. "Do you have proof?"

"No," she said miserably. "But she was dating him when she disappeared. It was right before the incident where he was burned. I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't listen." She wrung her hands. "She was very interested in vampires after you all came out and she was blindly infatuated with him."

"It would seem that you and your sister were little alike," he told her with a benevolent smile.

She smiled. "Opposites, in fact. In almost every way. But until she took up with him, we were close."

"Well, Miss.."

"Gudersson," she provided.

"Miss Gudersson," he amended, "I will look into the matter. However, I must call in the local Sheriff, or I would be considered remiss in vampire society. If you will pardon me a moment?"

"Thank you," she said, almost overcome with hope that finally someone was going to at least try to help her find Haley.

He spoke on the phone for a moment, then hung it up.

She stood up nervously. "Would you like for me to go wait in the foyer?" she asked, hoping he would.

"No need. He will be here in but a moment."

A knock sounded on the door. He smiled again, "Ah, there he is."

He opened the door. "I believe this situation is more appropriately handled by a Sheriff," he said, and then gestured for the man on the other side of the door to enter.

"Did I not tell you already to let this go? That I would look into it?" Eric demanded as he strode in and towered over her, glaring.

"Ah, I see you've met," Vampire Bill said, walking back behind his desk.

"And do what? Nothing! What if she's still alive somewhere and needs me? And I'm waiting around for you to do nothing?" she jumped up. "I can't sit around and ignore this!"

"You will wait and let me do my investigation," he snapped at her, his fangs popping out.

"No, I won't, she's my sister. You don't know her and don't care, but I do!"

"Yes, you will. You are wrong, I have a lead that I am already investigating," he told he, stepping toward and causing her to back up against the chair.

"You aren't the boss of me," she crossed her arms and tried to fight the terror burgeoning in her belly.

"Yes, I am," he told her. "If you want me to continue to pay the bills on your grandmother's house, and if you want to continue to live there, you will do as I say!"

"You're a high-handed, autocratic jerk!" she told him, fighting to keep her voice steady.

"Maybe," he said, stepping so close to her that her vision was filled with his powerful chest and she could smell him again.

An unfamiliar feeling swept through her and she was aghast to realize that she found him attractive.

"But I am still the boss of you, and I'm telling you to let me do my job. Your grandmother did what she did because she wanted me to protect you. She took care of my father's things, and I'm going to repay her by doing what she wanted and protecting you. Even from yourself."

"I don't need Mormor's house," she told him, wishing desperately for a place to retreat to. "I make my own money. I'm not helpless."

"Where do you think you can go that I can't find you?" he asked.

"What? You can't-"

"Who's going to stop me?"

Her eyes flickered to the dark-haired man sitting behind the desk.

He looked at Eric and raised an eyebrow.

"She is mine," Eric said to him.

Bill looked back at her. "I'm afraid this is really none of my business," he said.

She felt Eric's hands in her hair and stiffened. He deftly pulled pins out until it fell. "And stop doing that to your hair," he told her, his voice low and soft against her ear.

He stepped back. "Go home, Alexis. Stay there and wait for me to update you on what I have learned. Do not bother the King again." He inclined his head toward Bill.

She tried one more time. "People aren't property, you know," she said.

"Well, it's a good thing you're just a human, instead of a person, isn't it?"

Her eyes met his for the first time. He was grinning at her, his eyes twinkling with boyish humor.

He turned to Bill and said, "My Liege, I apologize that my human disturbed your evening." Then his eyes met Alexis's again. "It will not happen again."

Bill merely nodded, waving his hand at them.

Eric stepped back and opened the door, waving her out of it. She marched to her car, trying to ignore his presence beside her.

"Mormor did not want you to-"

"Yes, she did."

"She wouldn't-"

"Yes, she would."

"You don't even know her!" Alexis said.

"Maybe you are the one who didn't know her as well as you think you did."

She started to speak again and he tilted her face up toward his with his hands. "You've nearly gotten yourself killed once already, Alexis. You've wasted your life in musty old books. Your Mormor knew that you would go looking for your sister. I don't need to understand what she was asking of me. I only need to know you."

"But I-"

"You can't find Haley alone, Alexis. You have to let someone else help you sometimes. You took care of your grandmother for many years, but when have you let someone else do something to help you?"

He wouldn't let her look away. She felt stripped, as if he had taken away all the layers she'd built over herself so carefully through all the years.

Unexpectedly, he picked up her hair and smelled it. "Leave it down. It reminds me of my misspent youth. The better parts of it. The days when women considered their hair to be part of catching a man." Then he stepped back and sped away into the darkness.

Vulnerable, confused, and uncertain, she got in her car and told the Garmin to take her home.


	5. Revelation

_Sorry the chapter lengths are so inconsistent. It will level out once the kitchen is done. I think... :p_

_Thank you for the awesome reviews and faves!_

* * *

><p><strong>5. Revelation<strong>

Eric knew that Alexis's elderly grandmother hadn't known what she really had when she'd left her Swedish artifacts to him. She had hoped, he assumed, that simply having such ancient artifacts would be enough to bring back his youth to him and convince him to help her protect her granddaughter.

And Alexis herself had proven surprisingly resilient. Despite what he knew could only be described as abject terror, she continued to press her personal search into her sister's disappearance. Ironically, her greatest danger came not from the investigation itself, but from her fear.

It took a great deal of character and loyalty to persevere in the face of fear as deep as hers was. And he knew that there was something more behind it beyond her sister's vanishing act. Alexis had seen something and been glamored, he was sure of it. The feelings hadn't been wiped away, just the memories. Whomever had glamored her had been sadistic, incompetent, or interrupted.

Even those emotions, though, were not keeping her from endangering herself to save her sister. The power of her terror did not cripple her, and Eric was amazed by that alone. He was not generally attracted to fragility, either. Fear, yes; that was his base nature as a vampire.

But as a man, he did not lust after fragile women. Or so he had thought. Yet her very vulnerability and her courage in the face of it tugged at him. When she was all boarded up behind her baggy clothes and her bun, she looked stalwart enough. But take the hair down and drop the glasses and she was delicate and petite.

He arrived back at Fangtasia and thought about whether he should give her his blood so that he could find her. She had a knack for trouble, for someone so generally shy.

"Your man is waiting for you in your office," Pam greeted him. "I almost had to glamor him to make him stay after you took off like that." She raked him with an irritated glance and strutted into the bar.

"What did you find?" he demanded of the private investigator he had hired.

"I believe there is such a ring between here and Mexico," he answered. "But infiltrating it seems to be difficult if not impossible. It is very closed."

"But you are certain it exists?" Eric demanded.

"Not certain, no," he replied. "I'm convinced, but most of my evidence is circumstantial."

"Give me what information you have gathered, please," he told him. "Then you may go."

The man was a human. His powers of persuasion and interrogation were limited, unlike Eric's. He would take it from there. Fury rose in him that anyone had ever dared to use his bar as a platform for human trafficking.

He put the papers aside for the moment, then went and slaked his lust—and his hunger—with one of his newer dancers, Anzhela. Her name meant 'Angel' in Russian. At one point, he had found the irony of that to be amusing, but tonight, he didn't care.

It was two am before he gave up on her and left for Arkansas. He disabled the alarm and went inside the old mansion. Re-arming it, he walked up the stairs. Opening the door, he went inside and stood watching Alexis sleep. Her hair was in a braid for sleep, and he suspected it always was.

He sat down on the bed and undid it until it was entirely free. He remembered something someone had said to him once, "Only the innocent sleep like the dead." When her hair was free, he thought she embodied the saying. She did not look childish, just innocent and peaceful in her sleep. Even moreso with her hair flowing free across the bed.

She stirred, rolling onto her back. Her eyes opened and fluttered closed, before snapping open again.

"Eric! What-"

He caught her gaze and held it. "Sleep, Alexis. Sleep and forget that I was here," he told her.

"So sleepy," she murmured, her eyes locked to his will.

"Wake up feeling peaceful," he told her, still holding her with his will.

"Peaceful," she whispered.

He released her and her eyes fluttered closed. Her lips were slightly parted in sleep and he fought the impulse to awaken her and take her and make her his in every sense. That he should be attracted to her was a phenomenon beyond his imagining. That he was so strongly attracted to her that he would actively choose to resist the impulse to take her, was beyond his ability to understand.

And she had no idea.

"What tangled webs we weave," he whispered to her, before turning off the alarm. He slipped out the door and reactivated it, speeding home moments before dawn. He had nearly lingered too long.

**OoOoOoO**

The next morning, Alexis woke with a sense of calm and ease that she couldn't remember having felt since she was a small child. She found that her hair had come undone during the night, and searched for the band that had held it, to no avail.

Shrugging, she got up and brushed the snarls out of it patiently before working out. She went to work, where she got strange looks and odd glances. She had never been 'sick' before, and apparently it had been the talk of the office.

It wasn't her hair, because she had defied Eric and worn it the way she wanted to. The same way she always did. It wasn't her clothes, and it wasn't her glasses.

She headed for the basement where she did her work, only to stop at the doorway. A brand new stool, plushly padded, stood where the decrepit old one had been. It was leather bound with a rotating seat. She stared at it, open-mouthed.

From behind her, Sarah said, "Some man called yesterday, asking if there were anything that you required to make your job easier. Wayne jokingly told him you could use a new stool, and you'd always wanted a rotating one. This came for you that afternoon. Express delivery."

There was a ribbon and a bow on it. Alexis walked up to it, confused. Who had sent her a chair? And such an expensive one, at that...

A small card peeked out of the bow and she picked it up. "Life doesn't have to be so hard. -Eric"

She stared at the card in confused consternation.

"Oh, who's Eric?" Sarah asked.

Alexis looked behind her, surprised to find that most of the office was gathered around, staring at her and the card in her hand.

She considered what to say. 'A vampire'? Maybe 'just some guy'? Or 'my worst nightmare'? How about 'the guy who my Mormor decided would make a better heir than me'?

"He's the executor of my grandmother's estate," she answered finally.

"I think he has the hots for you," Sarah said, nudging her with an elbow.

At that, Alexis laughed out loud. "And pigs fly every Sunday. This is a guilt gift because Mormor picked him to be executor over me."

"Nuh uh," Sarah told her. "Men don't give you gifts out of guilt until _after_ you're married. Then those are the only ones you ever get." She sniffed and walked away.

Alexis pulled the ribbon and bow off of the chair and was glad she was in the basement away from the whispers and glances of her coworkers. Eric had drawn more attention to her in one day than she'd gotten in the ten years she'd been there before—combined.

She left late that evening, arriving home and going to the artifact room. She dusted and swept as she did every Wednesday, taking care to check each of the protective glass cases for cracks.

"What are you doing?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Eric at the door.

"I'm dusting. I don't allow the maid in here," she told him, turning back away to finish up.

"I know that," he told her, low and soft in her ear. "I meant what are you doing with your hair tortured into this disgusting bun again?"

"It gets in the way when I'm cleaning or working. And working out," she told him.

"Then wear it in a braid, but don't do this," he told her. His hands pulled at pins and she squirmed to get free.

"Stop!" she said.

His fangs snapped out and he hissed at her. She shrank backwards.

"Yes, Eric," he told her. She scowled at him. "Say it," he told her.

"No, you're not the boss of-"

Her last word turned into a strangled squeal as his fangs pierced her neck. She fought him, pulling and twisting to get away. Terror warred with unexpected feelings of desire. He overpowered her easily and she found herself held against his long, lean body. He growled as he drank from her and she found herself inexplicably, unexpectedly, and incredibly aroused.

She fell against him, and felt his cock pressing against her. His body was hard and cool.

He withdrew his fangs and she clung to him. His tongue, cool and teasing, ran over the bites on her neck. His hand was tangled in her hair, released from its pins.

"Alexis," he said, nuzzling her neck. "I'm waiting."

"You bit me!" she accused.

He twisted his hand in her hair so that she was looking up at him. "You disobeyed me," he answered. "Braided, or down. No bun," he reminded her.

She hesitated and his fangs snapped out again.

"Yes, Eric," she whispered.

He smiled and leaned forward. She was surprised to find herself disappointed when, rather than kissing her, he said in her ear, low and sexy, "Go clean up. I have news for you."


	6. Progress and Pain

**6. Progress and Pain**

He was all business when she appeared in the doorway. She had stared at the bites on her neck and tried to find a way to cover them, finally accepting defeat with her current wardrobe... until she realized that she had a turtleneck in her winter clothes. She put it on, satisfied that it covered the bite marks.

She was surprised to find that it was a struggle to let her hair down and leave it. It swayed to her knees, and she turned to make sure that the bottom of it was properly straight across.

So as she walked into the room in a brown turtleneck and her hair down, she felt almost queasy with fear. He was a vampire, and no matter how charming he was one minute, she knew now that he could turn on her instantly. What if he had killed her instead of stopping?

He looked at her appraisingly. "I have a suspicion of what may have happened to your sister," he told her, walking up to her as she sat down after he indicated a chair at her dining table. He came up behind her and she felt his hands moving her hair.

"You do?" she demanded, starting to turn.

He turned her back forward, draping her hair over her shoulder.

"I've learned that Liam, Malcolm, and Diane were invovled in a human trafficking ring."

He found what he was looking for, and she gasped as he ripped the neck of her shirt down the seam. Then he ripped it completely off. He dropped the bit of cloth in her lap casually and leaned against the table in front of her.

"They were operating it, apparently, out of my bar. Which, by the way, infuriates me." He said it as casually as if he hadn't just ripped her shirt up and then informed her that her sister was probably a sex slave.

"You will let me handle this, Alexis," he told her.

"But I-"

His fangs snapped out and his eyes glittered at her.

Her stomach twisted in a knot. "Yes, Eric."

"I mean it, Alexis. You endanger yourself with this foolishness of rushing off to try to get information that I can simply glamour out of people."

He sat on the table and leaned toward her, bracing his forearm on his knee. "I'm trying to make sure you know I'm getting something done. Don't betray me by abusing the information I'm giving you."

Her eyes met gorgeous green ones and confusion rose as she was assaulted by fear and lust at the same time. She was glad that he had washed her blood off of his face, but some of it still dotted his shirt. She reached up unconsciously to cover the bite on her neck.

"I am going to protect you," he told her. "And if I can, I will find your sister." He took her hand off of her neck and ran his finger down her palm. "But you have to cooperate with me, Alexis. You have to obey me immediately. If I tell you to run, I don't want to have to threaten you to get results."

She stared at him in consternation. His touch, despite being cool, was causing reactions in her body that she'd never even know it had the potential for. He raised her hand to his face and took a deep breath, as if he could smell the blood in her veins.

She jerked away from him and he let her go, a knowing smile on his face.

He leaned forward. "Do you think you can do that, Alexis?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but she had gotten distracted.

He leaned over just a bit more and she felt his lips and tongue on her neck, lapping at the bite on her neck. She wanted to flee. She wanted to... do things she hadn't even thought about for years. His hand curled into her hair.

"Say it," he murmured.

"Yes, Eric," she said, breathless and only half aware that she was clinging to him again.

"Good girl," he whispered, and then he was kissing her and she was dragged up against his body as his tongue and lips made her forget why she had objected to him in the first place.

"I have to go," he told her, pulling away. "I have more work to do tonight to find out what exactly is happening with the humans in my bar." His cool fingers ran down her neck. "You are mine, Alexis Gudersson."

**OoOoOoO**

She went to work the next day in a turtleneck. She couldn't yet bring herself to admit she had become a 'fangbanger'. But to her surprise, she felt guilty doing it. That night, her hair came out of its braid again in the night. Friday night, she put the band on tighter.

Saturday morning, she woke up with her hair loose from its band again. Frustrated, she worked out and tried to figure out what to do with herself. Finally, she got in her car and drove to Bon Temps. She got out at Merlotte's and went inside.

"Hi there," Sookie greeted her with a smile. "Your hair looks pretty like that," she added.

"I just wanted to stop by and thank you for getting me in to talk to Vampire Bill," she told the pretty blond, feeling dowdy beside her.

Sookie sat down across from her. "You're welcome. Though if I had known you were Eric's, I probably would have warned you that Bill wouldn't get involved."

"I'm not," Alexis said. "Well, he says I am, but-"

"But people aren't property!" Sookie finished for her.

"Right," Alexis smiled gratefully. Someone got it.

"They're all like that," Sookie told her. "I swear it's some kind of genetic disorder that comes with vampirism or something."

"But then you find yourself talking just like them," Alexis lamented.

"No kidding," Sookie said with a grin. "It's contagious, I guess." She pulled a pad out of her apron. "So what'll you have?"

Alexis gave her order; some iced tea and a medium-rare burger.

She got out her book and tried to read, but she couldn't even focus well enough to make out individual letters. She stared at the wall and wondered if Mormor had known, or guessed, that she would be so attracted to Eric.

"Upside down," Sookie told her as she placed the iced tea on the table.

"What?" Alexis asked blankly, blinking at her.

"The book. It's upside down."

"Oh." Alexis sighed. "I can't concentrate on it anyway."

"Sometimes when I'm without Bill all day, I find myself trying to decide if I should file my nails or paint my toenails. That's when I know it's time for a nap so I can get up in the evening and spend a whole night with him."

"That's a terribly complex decision, though," Alexis said, deadpan.

Sookie smiled. "I know it."

She went on to another table, and Alexis was glad she had come to thank the other woman. She hadn't realized how lonely she had become without Mormor until she got to have a simple, nonsensical chat with someone that wasn't life-or-death.

And waiting for Eric was harder than she had ever imagined possible.

She ate and paid, then got back in her car and went home. She paced around the house, and cursed herself for being too tidy. If only she had something to clean. Finally, she decided that she had struck on the right idea. She opened the door to the attic and went up into it. There were multitudes of old boxes up there, and tons of dirt and dust. If that didn't keep her busy until Eric brought news of his investigation, she didn't know what would.

She went to her room and braided her hair. Covering it in a bandana, she went back up into the attic. Four hours later, she heard someone climbing the ladder. She turned with a smile, expecting Eric.

It was a man wearing a black mask.

"Where's the money, bitch? Where are the jewels?"

She backed away. How had they gotten past the alarm system? There were two of them, the second coming up behind the first.

"There aren't any jewels and there's no money," she told them.

"What's with all the fancy security and alarms, then?" the second one asked her.

"My grandmother died and the executor of her estate promised her he would protect me. This is his way of doing it," she answered. "That's it."

"Bullshit," the first one snarled. He grabbed her and she fought for all she was worth. He punched her in the face and she tried to bite him.

He threw her down and kicked her. She heard a rib crack. "Where are the fucking jewels?" he yelled, kicking her again.

The second one grabbed her head and slapped her so hard across the face that she felt blood trickle down from her nose. "Where's the money, bitch?"

"There is none, I swear," she said, fighting back sobs.

"You lying bitch," the first yelled. He kicked her and kicked her again.

A moment later, his buddy pulled him off. "Tell us where the money is, or the jewels, whatever, and we'll leave," he said.

Gagging on her own blood, she sobbed. "There's nothing. I swear-"

Blow after blow landed on her and she lost consciousness.

**OoOoOoO**

He couldn't find her. He looked in her room, and looked in the artifacts room. Her room was in complete disarray, but the artifacts room was undisturbed. A sick feeling began to roll through him and he went from room to room at lightning speed.

They were all rifled through, as if someone had been searching for something and not found it.

He stood still and strained his hearing, hoping he would catch even the slightest motion. Maybe she had found a hiding place. Her car was in the garage, so he knew she had to be there, somewhere.

The faintest sound reached him. A thready, weak heartbeat touched his ears, and he levitated so that his own footfalls couldn't drown it out. Ghosting down the hallway, he passed it by. Confused, he turned around. It was there.

Above him. He rose.

The heartbeat was dangerously slow. He looked around and saw no reasonable reason for the sound to be where it was. So he did the only thing left to him: he punched through the roof into the attic.

The lack of light did not effect him as it did humans. He saw her broken body lying against some boxes, her body temperature also dangerously low.

"Alexis," he breathed. How she was still alive, as badly as she was beaten, was impossible to guess.

"Eric?" she said, her voice gurgling. "Didn't tell them about your father's chair," she whispered, the coughed with a pained, strangled sound. "Alarm was off. I never turn it off..."

He opened his wrist and held it against her lips. She didn't fight him, or even react. At first, he heard only the gurgle of her breathing, then she swallowed once, a whining, keening, agonized sound following it.

He let her head fall back slightly and felt her throat. Her trachea had been kicked in, she could barely breathe or swallow at all. Knowing it would hurt, but not as badly as death, he pressed so that it snapped open. Then, steeling his heart against the whimper of pain she gave, he let more of his blood pour into her mouth.

She coughed and spume flew from her mouth. A moment later, she lost consciousness and he swore, focusing his energy to seal his torn wrist. Looking around, he found the hatch down into the house and lowered her through it. Then he changed his hold on her and walked out of the mansion. Reaching into his pocket, he activated the alarm—too little, too late. He swept into the air with her and flew at full speed to Bill's mansion.

He walked into the room where Sookie was sitting on Bill's lap. They leaped up and stared.

"Oh my god, what happened?" Sookie demanded.

Eric looked at Bill. "I need your help. We have to save her."

"How did this happen?" Bill asked, biting his wrist open to let his blood run into Alexis's mouth.

"It's my fault. I left the alarm off last night. I go sometimes when she doesn't know and watch her sleep."

Sookie looked at him like he'd grown two heads. "Who are you, and what have you done with Eric?"

"Very funny for a faerie," he snapped.

"Glad you think so," she said, pert as always.

Bill withdrew his wrist from Alexis's mouth. "Her wounds are extensive," he said.

"And she has already had my blood," Eric answered. "I fear she may not make it. I wonder how she was alive at all."

"If she lives, you're going to tell her that you've gone all weird stalker-vampire on her, right?" Sookie asked.

"No," Eric told her. "Neither will you."

"You have to tell her why the alarm was off."

"I will tell her that. In my own time, in my own way," he growled at her.

She threw her hands up. "Can you reason with him?" she asked Bill.

He shrugged. Then he looked at Eric. "He's a big boy. He can handle his own affairs." He straightened up and said, "Can we not do this again anytime soon? Especially with one that terrified of us."

"What?" Sookie demanded. "How can she be terrified of you? She was looking for you."

"I believe she has been attacked by a vampire and then inadequately glamored. She does not remember the event, only the fear it created in her."

Alexis groaned and sat up before Bill could question him further, and Eric was grateful for the distraction—as well as knowing that she was alive.

"What happened?" Bill asked her.

"Thieves. But they just thought I had money or jewels," she said. "Oh god, I feel like I've been run over by a semi." She put her hand to her head and swayed.

"You were badly beaten and almost dead," Eric told her. Sliding his hands along her neck, he caressed her cheeks with his thumbs. Closing his eyes, he pressed his lips against her forehead. He opened them again when he felt moisture on his thumb and realized she was crying silently.

"What is it, little doe?" he asked her, tilting her face up.

"I lost my glasses and I don't want to go home," she whispered softly, her voice ashamed.

"Sookie will take you tomorrow and you will get contacts," he told her, pulling a credit card out of his wallet and handing it to Sookie. To his relief, she took it without argument—for a change.

"But I-"

He almost snapped his fangs at her, but he knew she was over-wrought. Instead, he kissed her lightly on the mouth. "Say it," he told her between kisses.

"Yes, Eric," she said, defeated.

"She can stay at my house," Sookie said. "And Bill even had a cubby put in, so you can stay with her, if you want."

"Thank you Bill," he said to the king, then "Thank you Sookie," to his wife. He accepted the keys Sookie held out to get into her house.

"You're welcome. But try not to get her killed there, please. I'm not sure I could take it."

He picked Alexis up and flashed across the lawn and over to Sookie's house. Opening the door, he went inside. He looked at her and was surprised to find her eyes shining and a smile on her face. He had never seen her look so unreservedly happy before. He raised and eyebrow and smiled.

"You're like an amusement park ride," she told him. "You should sell tickets."

He grinned at her. "You haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until you get to ride me for real."

He was pleased when she gasped and turned red, burying her face in his neck. "I didn't mean it that way," she objected.

"I did," he told her, unrepentant.

But he found himself regretting one thing. He had wanted to win her over completely before giving her his blood. He never wanted her to doubt whether her feelings for him were real. He had already felt her responding, seen her turning to him on her own. But once she learned what his blood did to her, she would never believe him.

"Do not go to work tomorrow," he told her. "You are still too badly injured."

"But I-"

He scowled at her. "Must you say that every time? Can't you just say 'Yes, Eric'? Ever?"

He laid her down on the bed.

"Well, I just-"

"No."

"But it's-"

He snapped his fangs out and cut her off.

He felt blind terror rise in her, then subside. He hadn't realized just how strong it really was, and snapped his fangs back in.

"Yes, Eric," she said meekly.

He kissed her and fought the demon inside him that wanted to devour her and taste that exquisite terror.


	7. Beyond Dreams

_Okay, off to strip the kitchen. Last update for a bit unless I get lucky and get a chance to do some writing late this even. I'm an insomniac, so sometimes I write late at night. Enjoy, and thanks again for the reviews!_

* * *

><p><strong>7. Beyond Dreams<strong>

She'd never been kissed that way before. Awkward, fumbled kisses in the back seats of cars were what she'd had for the most part. Even her sexual experiences had been fumbled and performed with little understanding.

But Eric kissed her like he meant it. As if she were beautiful and desirable, not just the only girl who'd let him try it out. His lips teased and tasted hers. His tongue slipped inside her mouth in a way that suggested yet more intimate actions.

His hands cupped her breasts and teased her nipples. His lips left hers to suckle at her breasts and she pleaded with him for... something. Some elusive fulfillment that hovered at the edge of his touch but never quite arrived.

His body was heavy on hers, the weight of it somehow comforting even as it was exciting and thrilling. His lips continued to tease and suckle at her nipple while his hand slid between her legs. She parted them and he touched her as she had only imagined being touched.

She arched against him, mewling and moaning, until he stopped abruptly. Panting, she lay beneath him as he looked into her eyes.

"What is it? Why did you stop?" She needed... she needed more.

"I don't know. It's your dream. What comes next?"

"You're supposed to know," she told him, surprised.

"I only know what you know," he answered.

"I know what comes next," Bill said, walking up behind Eric. His fangs snapped out, and Alexis screamed herself awake.

She was lying on the bed, her legs spread and her hands tangled in the comforter of Sookie's bed. Eric stood leaning against the door frame, staring at her in brooding silence.

"Am I still dreaming?" she asked him.

"No," he answered and said nothing more.

She clamped her legs shut and crossed her arms over her chest, her nipples erect in the cool air.

**OoOoOoO**

He knew she had been dreaming about him. She'd lain on the bed, bruised and still sexy. Her arousal was intense, and he almost smiled knowing she was experiencing that, blood or no blood. But the sounds she made, her writhing on the bed, and the hair spilling around her in untamed rivulets left him on the knife's edge of self-control.

She had felt no fear at all in her dream. She was a complex, unpredictable woman. Frightened and quavering one moment and fighting like a trapped cat in spite of it. She had fought back against them as hard as she'd fought him when he bit her. One small woman against what he guessed was two men, had never stood a chance, though, of course.

Her emotions in her dream had been simple and uncomplicated, though. They were layered, but simple. And intoxicating.

Without the ingrained fear from having been glamored, she felt admiration for him, layered with acceptance, acquiescence, and even affection.

But it was the emotion coursing through her now behind the lingering sexual attraction and the renewed fear that made it difficult to stay away from her.

In all his years, Eric had kept many humans. Some of them he had owned even in the eyes of the law. All of them, he had marked and fed as he had her. The vast majority, he had cared for, protected, fed, and given comfortable lives. It was simply the way things were. They fed him, he fed them.

This tiny, delicate, frightened woman whispered, her eyes averted, "Thank you for saving me."

It wasn't just words. It wasn't lip service or even the usual human selfishness. It was a genuine, deep gratitude that made the words inadequate.

"You're welcome," he told her, his voice graveled by lust and boiling, complex emotions.

He should not be feeling this way about a human. They were frail and fleeting to begin with, but this woman was especially fragile and vulnerable. The man wanted to protect her, the vampire wanted to devour her. She conflicted him, put him off-balance.

He had forgotten to turn her security system back on. He had never dreamed, in a thousand years, that he might find pieces of his father and mother again. He had, and he treasured them more than he could have imagined.

But he had forgotten to protect them, in lingering so long to watch this woman. More than that, he hadn't thought of them at all until that moment, for his first and only thoughts had been for her. Even now, he was eaten up with the knowledge that he had failed her so catastrophically.

He realized that standing silent in the doorway, lost in his own thoughts, was having a profound effect on her. Both her fear and her arousal was intensifying quickly, a side-effect of his blood. Although he had expected that it would mute the raw edges of her fear rather than intensifying it. He frowned. It should have, in fact.

The frown made her curl in on herself and he realized she was struggling to control herself. She always displayed that controlled facade to the world. She usually displayed it to him. He'd never been fooled by it, but he was surprised that she maintained it in the face of such powerful, conflicting emotions.

He stood up from the doorframe and did something stupid. He walked over and sank down on the bed beside her. His own self-control was fragile and he should have walked away. But he couldn't leave her alone with the turbulence he felt in her.

"Come here," he said. Simple words. Simple request.

He felt the storm in her. The desire to comply. The desire to refuse. The fear, the uncertainty... the desire.

And he felt her surrender. It was sweet, that surrender. Heady and intoxicating, as much because none of the battle showed on her face. She shifted on the bed and he drew her against him, feeling her wince from the bruises that still covered her body.

Her question was unexpected when it came. "Do you miss your father still?"

"Yes," he admitted.

"It's hard to imagine that our family had those things all that time, and neither of us ever knew. That chair was Mormor's favorite artifact."

"I did not think that anything of them had survived. I thought that thieves had taken it all." An interesting thought struck him then. "If your family has had them all of these centuries, then they must have been the royal family of your clan."

She smiled against his shoulder. "Did you just insinuate that I am a Swedish princess, Prince Eric?"

Her amusement rolled through him and he grinned. "Are you going to change your name to an obscure symbol that no one can pronounce?" Her laugh was sweet and soft and he realized he'd never heard it before.

She quieted, but he still felt that mix of fear and gratitude. It was strange that it had not faded.

"What happened to you?" she asked. "The stories only tell that your family was slaughtered. The reason cannot be spoken of."

"A vampire," he told her. "With his minions. I was not there to help protect my father, my mother, my newborn sister. I was..." he was surprised how difficult it was to admit this to her, "... with a woman."

He was surprised to feel her compassion. It wasn't something he expected from her, after his initial interaction with her.

"Well, that solves the mystery," she told him. "You know, whether the horny comes first or the vampirism comes first. Like the chicken and the egg, only different..."

"You are trying to use humor to make me feel better," he said. "You're not as insensitive as you appear."

"No, I'm not insensitive. I just lost my Mormor, and my sister. I understand loss. I'm just not very smart," she said. "I say stupid things a lot. I'm sorry."

She changed the subject. "So you were with a woman. You heard screams?"

"My father had been asking me to settle down. To take on the responsibilities of the kingship so that I could take over for him. I was more interested in women and ale." He closed his eyes against the memories. "When I heard the screams from the dining hall, I dressed as quickly as I could. I was the strongest warrior in our clan. The fastest, the best." He said it without arrogance, but instead with shame. "And I failed them, just as I failed you."

Her compassion shocked him to his core. "You can't blame yourself, Eric. I left the alarm off and let them in-"

"I left it off," he told her.

"What?"

"I came to see you, but you were sleeping. I left in a hurry and I didn't turn the alarm back on. It was so near dawn that I panicked and..." He felt his failure like a stone on his chest. "I'm sorry."

"But I always get up at five," she said, frowning.

"I must make it home to Shreveport before dawn, and into my coffin. If I do not, I bleed. If the rays of the sun find me, I will burn and die quickly." He didn't tell her that it had been the blaring of her alarm that had made him flee. He hadn't wanted to get caught staring at her like a schoolboy with a crush.

"It is my fault that you were attacked."

"Is that why you saved me? Because you felt responsible?" Disappointment, in her voice as well as her feelings.

He grinned at her. "I saved you because you are mine."

"I'm not property, you know."

"I am a person, you know."

"You're overbearing and bossy."

"That's because your Mormor made me the boss of you."

"They could have destroyed your family's things, Eric."

"I know. But the memories they hold are within me, not inside of them. I do not wish to lose them. They can not be replaced. But if they are gone, the memories will still be there. If you are lost, then I have lost something of true value. It is the attack on you that I regret the most."

She was staring at him in consternation and confusion. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"You don't even like me," she said. "You're just taking care of me because-"

"I didn't like you. Until I realized that your reaction to me is not normal and not your fault," he told her, turning so that he could wrap around her more thoroughly and see her more clearly. "I think that you have been glamoured. You have forgotten why, when, and how... but not how it made you feel."

"Well, that doesn't make sense. Why would anyone have glamoured me?"

"Maybe he was watching you sleep and didn't want to get caught," Eric smirked. "He was probably considering snatching you out of bed and carrying you off and licking and sucking and fucking you until you couldn't walk-"

Her reaction was not what he expected. She bolted upright, her eyes wide. Terror blew through her like a violent wind. "Haley!" she said, her hand going to her mouth. Her eyes were glazed as if she were lost in her own mind and Eric sat up, too.

It was easy for him to put together what happened then. She caught Liam taking her sister and he glamoured her. He was especially sadistic, so he no doubt left enough seeds in her mind to engender the terror Eric felt in her, while removing all memories of his own presence. It would have suited his cruelty to leave her in abject terror of every vampire she saw.

He wondered that she could stand his presence at all, given the realization of whom had glamoured her and why.

"Shh," he soothed her. He kissed her, distracting her from the rampant fear inside her. She struggled for a moment and then surrendered, that sweet transition from terror to desire that made him ache to be inside her.

Finally he pulled away from her, kissing down her neck and across her shoulder. He wondered if fucking her senseless until dawn would ease the fear or worsen it.

"You should have come sooner," she told him.

He pulled away and grinned at her. "Ladies first," he said.

Her brow furrowed and her wide brown eyes blinked at him in puzzlement. Then she looked away, her cheeks reddening. "You're being a pervert, aren't you." It wasn't really a question, but it amused him.

"Two kinds of vampires in this world, little doe. Dead ones and perverted ones. Guess which one I am."

She was amused, but didn't smile. He found himself disappointed. He laid down on his side, propping his head up with his hand and running a finger along her inner thigh as she sat cross-legged in front of him.

"What were you referring to?" he finally asked, before her lust made him forget himself.

"To visit. You should have come earlier, so that you wouldn't have to rush home so fast."

He pondered her. She was contradictory in every way. "You have expressed such rage at me, so frequently. Why are you not angry that I left the alarm off and got you attacked?"

"Because, that you did not do on purpose, unlike the rest," she said.

"I did not ask your Mormor to leave her artifacts to me or to put me in control of your financial situation, either," he reminded her.

Ah, there was the anger. How strange she felt it over what he had no control over, but did not feel it about what he had control over. But there was underlying hurt, as well.

"Even my own grandmother hated me," she said softly.

He could feel her fighting tears and a profound sense of hurt.

"Really? Is being mine so very terrible?"

"I was happy the way I was-"

He sat up and pulled her into his lap so that she was straddling him, her legs around him. He felt the heat of her crotch against him and it took all of his willpower to keep his fangs in. He buried his fingers in that glorious hair and pulled her lips to his.

"If that's happy, it's no wonder the human race is murdering itself," he whispered in her ear, nibbling it before running his lips down to lick and suckle at his marks on her neck. He would not drink from her now, she was still too weak.

But he thought about it as much as he thought about having sex with her all night long. Maybe longer if he could stand it, and he probably could. And he knew she wouldn't object. She feared him, but she also wanted him.

He rolled over on top of her, thrusting against her. She gasped into his kiss and he pulled away.

"You should sleep now," he told her. "Sookie will take you for contacts tomorrow."

"There's nothing wrong with my glasses," she said, and he felt irritation as well as hurt in her.

"They are ugly and unnecessary," he answered.

She sounded bitter as she told him, "I've heard it all, Mr. Northman."

He scowled. So he was back to 'Mr. Northman' after she was laying on the bed squirming from dreaming of him?

"All of what?" she blinked at the cold tone of his voice, but he couldn't help being irritated with her.

"How I would look better if I looked like someone else. If I cut my hair, wore makeup to hide my face, no longer had glasses, dressed like someone else... if only I weren't me, think how pretty I would be..."

"So you think that this is you? The glasses are you? The clothes are you? Your hair is you?"

"It's an expression of me," she told him, pulling away further.

"No, it's an expression of your unhappiness and your desire to hide and not be noticed. You can't stand for anyone to actually see you. You've got stage fright."

"You don't know anything about me," she answered.

"Contacts, Alexis. No glasses."

"But I-"

He snapped his fangs out, and she recoiled.

"Yes, Eric."

They were sexy words as much because in his world, a disobedient and uncontrolled human was a dead human, as because her surrender to him was overwhelmingly sweet to the vampire in him. He stood up, looking down at her, the first nudging of dawn coming upon him.

"I will rise at dusk. Be waiting for me."

She opened her mouth and he raised an eyebrow with a smirk. If she said 'But, I-', she was going to be in trouble.

She subsided. He turned and walked to Bill's cubby and descended. She would obey. He was certain of it. He laid down on the bed in the cubby, his cock still hard and his lust unsated and unabated. Soon, he promised his recalcitrant body. Very soon.

He woke at dusk and left the cubby to find her in the kitchen, whistling to herself.

Her hair was braided but she wore no glasses. He was pleased.

He turned her around, ignoring her gasp of surprise, and smiled at her. He felt the twinge of her terror and kissed it away. "Come with me," he told her, taking her hand.

Her eyes narrowed and he raised an eyebrow.

She followed without a word. He hid his grin.

Outside, he locked the door and picked her up. Then he flitted to Fangtasia, entering through the back in order to hide her presence. In his office, Pam was waiting as he'd asked her to before leaving the cubby. He'd been surprised he got reception there.

He set Alexis down and was delighted to find her breathless and giggling.

Pam was looking at him with a certain amount of impatience and disgust. "I think she likes roller coasters," he told her.

"Fascinating," Pam answered. "What do you want?"

Angered by her insolence, particularly in front of Alexis while she herself was allowed none, he snapped his fangs out and hissed at her, gripping her neck and lifting her. "What did you say to me?"

"I'm sorry," she said. Her tone completely changed, she asked, "What did you need from me?"

He walked back to Alexis and picked up her hair, pulling the band out of it. "Highlight her hair and take her to the tailor."

"Do you have any idea how much and how long it will take to highlight all that hair?" Pam demanded.

"I have complete faith in you, Pam."

"What do you want me to get for her at the tailor's?"

"Everything. But do not allow her to get turtlenecks," he responded.

"But I-"

He snapped his fangs out and drank from her. Not much, because she was too weak. Enough to remind her that he could. Enough to make himself ache with the lust for more.

He licked her wounds closed again and drank of her scent, hungry for her blood and her body.

A bit of rebellion remained in her, and she said, "You don't have to talk about me like I'm not right here." It was his own blood, he knew. She was high on it, and emboldened.

So he forgave her. "Pam will not know what to get for you if she does not have instructions," he answered.

"I don't want to change," she whispered. "I was happy."

"You were not," he informed her. "You will know you are happy when you accept that you are mine." He kissed her on the head and told Pam, "I have much to do tonight. Be certain she is at Sookie's house before you go to ground."

"Fine," Pam told him. "Though it will probably take all night to do anything remotely acceptable to that hair. Are you sure we can't cut it?"

"I like it," Eric told her. "It reminds me of my youth. Women considered their hair to be part of capturing a man's attention. It was a good tradition, pity it fell away. There is little so sweet as the brush of a woman's hair on your legs when she's riding you."

He grinned as his words had the desire effect on Alexis and her face heated, her eyes falling. Hiding from the thought of sex with him.

Not for too much longer.


	8. Lessons in Helplessness

_This chapter contains sexual content, violence, sexual violence. Strong adult/sexual scenes/situations. Those sensitive to rape, please do not read._

* * *

><p><strong>8. Lessons in Helplessness<strong>

Pam lifted her hair and pulled it under various lights. "Well," she said finally, "it's in good condition at least. It should take well to highlights. Wait here," she told Alexis.

A few minutes later, she returned with another vampire. This one wore more bangles than Alexis had ever seen, much less all on one person.

"This is Carmella. She's a specialist in hair techniques, and Eric will kill me if I ruin the texture of yours," Pam told her. Then the pair proceeded to completely ignore everything Alexis said, discussing what colors to put in and what techniques to use.

Finally she simply sat and drifted in a daydream about being somewhere else and doing something else. She tried to shake the recurring images of Eric that kept rising before her eyes, but he wouldn't leave her alone, even while Pam and Carmella pulled and tugged and applied stinking potions to her hair.

She wanted to be at home. She wanted to be somewhere else. She was so afraid that she would look in the mirror and not recognize herself that she had everything she could do to stay in the chair as two vampires hovered over her with cold hands and clinically-scented hair products.

She tried to control her fear, but the longer she was around the two women, the worse it got. They were vampires, and her mind just couldn't turn that knowledge off for her. Plus, she couldn't stop wondering where Eric was and if he was making any progress.

Eventually, they sat her up and let her look at herself in the mirror. The differences were surprisingly subtle, but the over-all effect was quite powerful. She not only had highlights, but they had done something that gave her hair life and volume. It swirled around her like a living thing, and she gaped in shock.

Somehow, they had managed to keep the volume down enough that it didn't drown out her face, but rather accented it, by highlighting more around the face than in the rest of it. She did look completely different, but in a very feminine way. She found the change both alarming and gratifying. What would Eric think, she wondered?

Pam and Carmella cleaned up, then Pam told her to follow. Uncomfortable with the vampire's brusqueness, Alexis followed.

Outside, Pam opened the door to the same sportscar that Eric had been driving the night he helped them with their flat tire. Alexis sat it and Pam said, "Wait here. There's a problem in the bar. Do not leave this seat."

She closed the door and the alarm beeped. Alexis jumped badly as Pam sped away back inside.

She sat back in the seat and looked at the unfamiliar image staring at her from the window. Beyond it, she saw the back door to Fangtasia open and two men came out, with a woman with them. A young woman, Alexis realized. She followed them silently and with a vacant expression. One of the vampires reached out and fondled her and said something.

Alexis ducked as they passed by the sportscar. She heard one of them say something about the 'nice tits' on the 'female'. Then, to her alarm, she heard, "Once we deliver her, I'm getting out of this. Northman's been sniffing around and asking questions."

The other one said, "I ain't afraid of Northman. Even he won't kill vampires."

The other one said, "Vamps disappear, man. I bet he has something to do with it at least some of the time. He's bad juju."

Alexis's heart was hammering, but she knew that girl was about to either lose her life or become a slave. She crept slowly along in their wake, trying to stick to the shadows.

One of them stopped, and Alexis froze. "Do you smell that?" he asked.

"You're being paranoid, Beckham. They're all tied up with the fire."

"Not that," Beckham said impatiently. "I smell human."

"We ain't got time to check it out. We'll flit when we get around the corner. Don't want anyone to notice it this close to Northman's bar."

Afraid that she would lose them, Alexis crept closer. Her heart sank as she realized that they were going to get away.

Taking a deep breath, she rushed out into the street as if she had just come from the alley. She realized her error too late. Pam had no idea where she was. She was alone with two vampires and a glamoured, vacant-looking human.

Taking a deep breath, she said, "Sorry to disturb you. I kind of had a panic attack there. Thought for a minute that someone was following me." She turned to head back toward Fangtasia.

"Maybe they was," the other one said, and the one called Beckham snickered. "But why don't you come along with us and party, pretty girl? With hair like that, you'll fetch a pretty penny."

"Two for one," Beckham agreed.

Alexis ran and screamed with all her strength when she was grabbed from behind. Her mouth and nose were clamped over by a hand and she fought, biting and clawing.

Beckham laughed. "She's feisty, too. Jackpot."

Then to Alexis's relief, Pam was there. One of the vampires went flying, and then Pam and Beckham were facing off.

"Run!" Pam snarled at her, and Alexis didn't need to be told twice. She fled as fast as her legs would carry her back toward Fangtasia. She was almost there when she was struck by something so hard that it knocked the breath out of her.

"Alexis?" Eric demanded.

"Pam," she said, panting. She pointed down the street. "Vampires. Fight." She bent over, struggling to catch her breath. She hadn't realized how far she'd gone and the full-on sprint she'd maintained had taken its toll.

"Get in my office. Now."

He flitted away and she obeyed, shaking so hard she could barely walk.

Eric walked into the room, followed by Pam and hour later. He said nothing to Alexis, in fact, didn't even look at her.

"Did you catch them?" she asked.

"Shut up, Alexis," Eric told her, still not looking at her.

He turned to Pam. "Never endanger yourself for a human, Pam," he said. He curled his fingers around the back of her neck and pressed his forehead against hers.

"I'm sorry, Eric. I thought-"

"No," he interrupted. "You didn't. Humans come and go, but you are precious." He lifted his head away from hers and looked at her, and Alexis's heart trembled. "If it happens again, there will be consequences."

Pam nodded and left as he opened the door and gestured her out.

He turned to Alexis then, staring at her with a cold, brooding look on his face.

"It wasn't her fault," Alexis told him, suddenly overcome with intense anxiety.

"It was," he answered her. "She was responsible for you. I left you with her... for that time, you were hers to protect and control. She failed me."

"She told me to stay in the car," Alexis objected. "I followed them, she didn't-"

"She didn't watch you. She let you run off like a toddler. She knew you were a human and thus not to be trusted, but she trusted you anyway."

"That's not fair," Alexis objected.

"What does it matter to you?" he asked, his face growing angry. "She's just a vampire. Not even a person."

"I'm sorry," Alexis said. "I know I was wrong to say those things."

"Well, that's nice," he told her. "Finally that sincere apology. And right in time, too. I will have the papers drawn up tomorrow for you to get your home back in full. I will remove my artifacts and give you the remote for the alarm system. You are no longer my responsibility."

Pain rose in her, unexpected and brutal. "Eric, please," she said.

He turned around and reached for the door.

"No," she said. "I was just trying to help-"

"You think that getting my Progeny killed is helping? You think that acting like a child and purposefully putting yourself into mortal danger is helping? Who or what are you helping, exactly?"

"With the investigation. They were going to sell that girl-"

"And you think that getting yourself sold with her is going to make the investigation easier? You think that getting Pam killed will help speed things along, is that it?" He shook his head. "I'm done with you, Alexis. You don't care. You have no sense. You endangered Pam and you endangered yourself and it didn't even occur to you until you were running for your life. All I asked was that you stay out of it. All I required of you was simple obedience and a bit of self-preservation."

He walked over to her. "I owe your Mormor an apology. But you are beyond my help and protection. Pam will drive you home. You will go back to your life and stay out of the investigation or I will ask Bill to lock you in his dungeon until I am finished."

"Eric, I didn't mean for Pam to be harmed. I didn't think they-"

"Yes. She didn't think before she went to protect a woman who obviously cares nothing for herself or anyone else. And you didn't think before you put my Progeny up against two vampires both older than her. You didn't think, and you often don't think. You walked into Fangtasia as if you thought vampires would answer your questions. You ran off chasing two vampires without thinking. You consider yourself to be intellectual, but when it comes to something as simple as obeying or keeping yourself safe, you're out to lunch."

He stalked to the door.

"Please don't go," Alexis said.

Twenty minutes later, he was back. "I will drive you myself. I'm not putting Pam into your hands again for you to lead into harm again."

"You told her not to-"

"She is under the mistaken idea that I care about you and that it matters to me if you go get yourself killed."

It hurt. Alexis was surprised by just how very much it hurt to hear him say that. She followed him to the car where he shut the door on her in silence. He got in and turned the engine on. She watched the lights go by and kept her face to the window. She would not let him see her cry.

He pulled up in front of Mormor's house—she still couldn't really think of it as anything but Mormor's house—and opened the car door for her before she could even reach for it. She got out and he held out the remote for the alarm.

She stared at it. "Please, Eric. I need help to find Haley. I'm sorry that I-"

"It was a simple request, Alexis. All you had to do was stay in the car and wait for Pam." His hand was hard on her jaw as he lifted her face to look into his eyes. A shard of terror slammed into her. His face tightened. "If you want to be mine, there is a cost. Obedience is part of it."

"I want to be yours," she said. "I'm trying. I just..."

"You don't have the luxury of excuses, Alexis. One mistake can cost your life. Or Pam's life. If you want to be part of my world, you have to understand how unforgiving it is." He stepped back. "Go home, Alexis. Go back to your life."

She stumbled toward the house and turned to watch as he left the driveway.

She went inside and cried into a pillow until she went to sleep. When she got up, she worked out and then she began to clean the house. She went back to work. She put her hair into a braid, unable to bring herself to go back to the bun. She went and got glasses, having found that her old ones were broken in the attic in a pool of dried blood.

Morose and uncertain, she found herself in tears frequently as she cleaned up the mess left by the robbers. Many things were broken and it was disheartening.

She dreamed of him every night and it distressed her. In her dreams, they were occasionally interrupted by Bill, which unnerved her. Her hair continued its distressing habit of coming out of the braid and she became frustrated with trying to find ways to contain it.

The next week, men came in trucks and hauled Eric's artifacts away. Alexis hovered over them, admonishing them to be careful. When they were gone, she sat and stared until dark fell. She didn't bother to get up and turn the lights on, preferring instead to stare out over the lawn.

She finally went inside and went to her room without turning any inside lights on, either. She found it strange how much she had adapted to darkness in just a short time with Eric.

She curled up on the bed and wondered where he had taken the artifacts.

A movement in the corner of the room drew her attention. There had been movement there, hadn't there? She stared into the darkness, her heart pounding. The gun was in the side drawer and she lunged for it, drawing it and pointing it at the corner.

"I know you're there," she said.

"And what are you going to do about it?"

She was so startled that she fired before she realized it was Eric's voice. She dropped the gun, shocked. "Oh my God, Eric, I didn't realize it was you!"

He stepped out of the darkness, looking down at the bullet hole in his shoulder. It healed right before her eyes, and he caught the bullet that fell from it, still smoking.

"Is that all you can do, Alexis? You tried to take my Progeny's life. You owe me."

He stepped toward her, and she realized that he looked angry. Very angry. "Please, Eric, I-"

"Run, Alexis." He punctuated the command with a snarl as his fangs ejected.

She realized that he meant to take her life for his Progeny, and she bolted for the door. But he was there. She ran into him and backpedaled.

He hissed at her, and she dodged for the gun again. Maybe if she shot him in the face it would slow him down long enough to...

She didn't make it. He grabbed her foot and dragged her away from the gun. She rolled over and kicked at him. He caught her other foot.

"Are you going to fight?" he asked. "That will be fun."

"Please, Eric," she pleaded. "I didn't mean for her to get hurt."

He let go of her. "Here, I'll give you a head start," he told her, opening the door.

She crab-walked away from him.

"Run while you still can, Alexis. I may change my mind." His smile was pure savagery.

So she ran. She got less than a couple of feet down the hallway before she ran into him again. She backed up and felt the door frame against her back. She shook her head, petrified. She should have known it would come to this. He was a vampire.

She was picked up and thrown bodily onto the bed. She scrambled for the other side of it but he grabbed her and dragged her back. She rolled over to kick at him, pushing with her legs and straining her arms to the point of pain.

She was flipped back over easily. Her arms were pinned behind her back and she heard her own breath rasping in the darkness. He held her hands with one of his and her struggles were useless. His other hand gripped her braid and turned her head.

Then, to her shock, she heard the zipper on his pants. She winced as the panties she was wearing under her nightshirt were torn away as if they were made of paper. Realizing that he meant to rape her and then kill her created a completely foreign feeling inside her. The terror mingled with arousal and she felt a deep-rooted shock at feeling anything of the sort.

Her life was numbered in minutes now and all she could think about was that his cock was cool as it pressed against her. Then he shoved inside of her and she whimpered. He leaned forward, thrusting until his hips were pressed against hers and he was buried fully inside her.

His voice in her ear made her jump. "If you wanted to be raped and sucked by a vampire so very badly, Alexis, all you had to do was ask."

His teeth sank into her neck and she struggled again, overcome by a primal, deep fear that combined with the feel of him thrusting inside her and the craving it summoned within her.

She felt the lassitude of blood loss flowing through her and then his tongue on her neck. He continued to thrust inside of her and she realized that the fear was slipping away. As if he sensed it, he released her, pulling her body up until she was propped on her hands. His hands cupped her breasts, teasing at her nipples.

"This wasn't what I wanted our first time together to be," he whispered in her ear. "I wanted to ease into you. I wanted to tease you. I wanted to see your face as I entered you. You took that away from me, Alexis." He pulled her head back and she heard anger in his voice when he continued, even as he continued to slide in and out of her. "You can't run from us, Alexis. You can't fight us off. You are as helpless as a newborn lamb."

She was almost standing now, her head tilted back against his chest. With his hand on her throat, he drove into her harder, using her shoulder for leverage to thrust with increasing rhythm. His thrusts were rough, and their bodies slapping together was the only sound in the darkness besides her own uneven, desperate breathing.

Unexpectedly, he sped up, until he was driving in and out of her in a blur of motion. She felt herself rapidly building toward orgasm as he used his vampire speed to thrust in and out of her. She had never felt so helpless, yet so incredibly filled with an overwhelming desire in her life.

He stopped when she was close to orgasm and she felt him throbbing and pulsing inside her. She groaned with frustrated lust as he held her hips against his and thrust into her a few more times, grunting slightly with each jerk of his hips.

He slid out of her and the motion was accompanied by a profound disappointment and sense of loss. The disappointment was punctuated by his zipper, and she bit her lip to keep from begging him to finish.

He turned her around, her nightshirt falling back into place around her.

He raised an eyebrow. "If you thought this was for your pleasure," he told her, his face inches from hers, "then you are mistaken and still have not learned the lesson I am trying to teach you."

She shivered. It was almost as if he could read her mind.

"Go to bed, Alexis. And be forewarned. If you pleasure yourself, I will know it, and you will pay for it."

His fangs gleamed amid her blood on his face. She was still afraid of him.

He smiled. It was a predatory, lustful smile. "Good night."

It was many hours before she finally went to sleep after he flitted out the door. She woke to find, to her chagrin, that her hair had escaped yet again from its band. She sighed and set about brushing it out, surprised to find that she couldn't stop smiling.


	9. Interlude

_Potsie, please make sure you read your messages. I agree that this is definitely a very "Dark Eric" fic. I apologize for not making that clear enough in the opening chapter author's note. As far as reviewing goes, it seems to be that way for me. I don't really get many reviews on most of my stories. It is what it is, I suppose. I guess people don't feel like they need to encourage me because I write so fast. *chuckle*_

* * *

><p><strong>9. Interlude<strong>

Eric wasn't particularly subtle with his torture techniques. He was more of a 'beat them senseless and rouse them with a bucket of water and do it again' kind of guy. He'd killed Torcer, and all they had left now was Beckham.

That was why he left the man's interrogation to the lovely Pam. She had a real knack with silver, and could draw out a vampire's torture for multiple nights before she got bored and started to get heavy-handed.

It had taken Beckham three nights of torture and two days of the bleeds to talk. His new place of residence was Bill's dungeon.

He was feeling, if not joyful, at least improved. He had information, and he had chastised his human. But he was mystified by the change in her, which had gone in exactly the opposite direction from what he had intended and expected.

It was... a change he liked. Very much. But it was a change that flew in the face of everything he knew about humans. And he knew quite a lot about humans, particularly human women. He had used the technique with great success many times. It was brutal and heavy-handed, and while it was sexually stimulating, it was generally distasteful.

Yet he did it because the life of the human was at stake. The purpose of terrorizing them was to generate instant obedience and subservient fear. He would never admit that he had intended it in such a fashion. Terrorizing humans was fun for vampires, without any real purpose except gratification. Such an excuse gave him excellent reason for terrorizing his humans into abject obedience.

He stood outside Alexis's house and pondered the alteration in her. It was not the fear he expected. Quite the opposite, in fact. He felt in her not the fear or the trauma he could expect. There was no lingering paranoia, no emotional turmoil. In fact, she felt calm and peaceful for the first time since he had been able to sense her.

Her irrational and excessive fear of vampires would no doubt remain. When she saw him again, it would surge with a tidal power as it always did. What had been done to her could not be undone.

But without his presence, he sensed in her the beginning of a simplistic trust. It baffled him because it was almost as if she understood him. As if she realized his intent and the purpose behind his attack on her and trusted him because he had not carried out the threat she had expected. He knew she had thought he was going to kill her—he'd meant for her to believe so.

Yet there he stood outside of her house, sensing not fear, but trust. It engendered unexpected feelings in him that he didn't understand. The protectiveness and the protectiveness intensified as he savored her emotional state. He needed her obedience because she was in danger and she had endangered Pam.

He'd always been torn by the change in his humans before. A part of him wounded by their terror and their reaction. He'd resented feeling forced to terrorize them in order to save them. He asked so little of them, and he gave them so much. Humans were simply too young to be obedient. No matter how long they lived, they retained that curiosity, that rebelliousness.

He wondered if he would be forced to become even more creative in forcing her compliance. He knew that he could glamour her. He had done it before, but only once. The resulting creature, once told to obey him instantly and without hesitation had been an empty and broken soul. It still haunted him.

With humans, there was no way to win. If they remained disobedient, they had to be punished. They were not considered 'pets' for no reason. They had to be trained to obedience or they would die to the predations of other vampires.

Alexis had come so very close to death that he shivered to think of it. Obedience. Such a simple thing, and so very, very difficult for them. They were all the same, ultimately.

Except she wasn't. She was different, and he was finding it likeable. Very likeable.

He pulled the second remote for the house out and turned the alarm off. He walked into the house and into the dining room, leaning on the door frame and watching her read. She was drinking something that smelled like mint.

She put the book down, and he grinned. She was thinking about him, if he knew her at all. She was aroused and conflicted.

Her head dropped onto her hands and she sighed. His grin widened. She was definitely thinking about him, and missing him. He walked up and pulled a chair out so that he could sit down.

She gasped and looked up. Knowing he was a vampire was enough to set off the terror alarm in her, and he waited for her to get it under control.

Her pretty, heart-shaped little face lit up with a smile, but he was irritated that she was wearing glasses.

"We have things to discuss," he told her. "Go put your contacts on and take that out," he flopped the braid at her. "You should not be wearing either, since you are not working or working out."

Her face reddened, and she looked away. "Yes Eric."

She walked out of the room and he felt triumph and pleasure, unexpected and acute. No argument, no delay. Maybe he would keep her. He smiled again.

When she returned, she looked beautiful. Her hair was down and it shifted with her movements like a living thing. Her eyes were large and luminous in her face, and he found her arousing. She needed new clothes, though, still. He would see to it, and soon.

Her heartbeat thundered in his ears. "You replaced my refrigerator," she said, smiling at him through her fear. She was brave for such a timid creature, he thought.

"The color and style pleases you, I presume?" he asked.

"It's great, thank you," she answered. "The other one still kept things cold, but the water chiller didn't work anymore."

He was over it. She liked it, that was all he cared about. "I will be gone for a few nights," he told her, serious now. "One of the vampires talked, so we have contact information. I will be following it, likely into Mexico."

He felt a strong stab of worry and concern from her. "You must stay here and wait. Do not do anything foolish," he told her.

"I just wanted to help," she said. "I'm sorry."

She was genuinely contrite, not fearfully so. She puzzled him in many ways.

"If I know you are safe, I will be able to do what I must do," he told her, standing up to pull her into his arms. "You are a distraction I can not afford when I am in a dangerous situation."

He was lanced by a piercing fear and he pulled back to raise an eyebrow at her. "What is it, little doe?"

"She's probably dead. Maybe this isn't a good idea. Maybe you should just-"

He cupped her face in his hand. "Are you worried about me?"

Her face flooded with color. He grinned. He kissed her, delighted by the realization. It was childlike and uncomplicated, and he was yet again surprised by her unexpected reactions. "You will have to give me something to take with me," he told her.

"But what-"

"Come, and I will show you," he told her.

She followed. A moment later, he got the question he'd expected from her earlier. She was timid, but definitely not stupid. "How are you getting in here?" she asked. "The alarm didn't warn me last night or tonight."

"If I told you, I would have to kill you," he said, intending it to be cryptic yet joking.

He felt her terror and considered kicking himself. She was glamoured to be terrified of him, some things would never amuse her.

"Okay," she said. Nothing else. He led her to her room.

Opening the door, he broke his wrist open. "Drink."

She paled and backed away. He stared at her. She stepped up and obeyed and he felt a strange thrill of power and a corresponding, awesome humility. The simple obedience was to be expected, but it felt as if it had been won. He healed the wound and pulled her against him.

He wanted her to remember this night. To remember him.

When he kissed her, it was with a living, growing longing that struck at the core of him where some of his humanity still clung in tatters. The part of him that had lived with the memory of failing his father and his mother and his sister.

He would find out what happened to her sister. He would not fail her as he had them.

Then he was lost in the sea of her emotions. He stripped her, then himself, and dropped her on the bed. His blood was beginning to take effect on her, and as an extension, he was drunk on her powerful emotional state.

Her body was even more beautiful than he expected. He would never have imagined she would be so slender and sleek under all of those oversized sweaters and baggy pants. Well, he had imagined it, but not really suspected it might be fact.

She was responsive to his touch. So much so that he was finding it difficult to control himself and take it slowly. He trailed kisses down her neck and licked the marks of his possession of her. He cupped one breast before teasing her nipple with his tongue. When she gripped his head and pulled him closer he groaned.

She was alive with her longing for him and he could hardly bear it. Above him came a sudden sound and he looked up. The air was heavy with the scents of ocean and flowers.

She sat up, staring around them in wonder. Their bed lay at the foot of a waterfall and beyond them in the other direction was the shore of the ocean. Surrounding them were tropical flowers, burgeoning with fragrance. The parrot above them called again, and gulls answered in the distance.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"My blood. Your dreams."

Her eyes met his. "It's a shared dream?"

"More like a hallucination, I suppose. Yes. Your mind built it." He smiled. She had a magnificent mind, as she did a phenomenal body.

"It's daytime," she said. She brushed his hair off of his face.

"Most humans do not build such perfect images," he told her. "Yours are vivid and remarkably clear."

"I've dreamed being here with you many times," she whispered.

He kissed her, aching with the sweetness of it and confused as to why that might be so. He slipped his hand down between her legs and found the spot he was looking for quickly. She gasped and squirmed under him and he smiled at her.

He trailed kisses along her body, feeling her, tasting her, smelling the sweetness of her. Her skin was soft and she smelled faintly of lavender and some sort of fruit. She was intoxicating and he thrilled in simply touching her and tasting her and discovering how responsive she really was.

He found her to be so wet with her own desire that she was almost too slippery to enter. When they were joined at last, he found her meeting and joining his rhythm and lost himself in the ancient song of sexual union. This time, he took his time, stroking into her slowly and watching her heavy-lidded eyes as she tried to take him in while he teased her by going slowly.

When she said, "Yes, Eric," this time, it wasn't submission, it was longing and it took his breath away. She said his name with unreserved and unpracticed passion.

He had ill-used her because he was a vampire and he made love to her slowly and deliciously because he was a man. He didn't know if he would ever return to her. When he left, he was going deeply into the underworld of his own society. A place where even a thousand year old vampire had reason to be cautious.

Morning was approaching when he laid down beside her several hours later. He looked at the blue sky with puffy clouds in it and he ached with memories. Her imagination was so exquisite and detailed that he almost forgot he had to go to ground.

He would find a place nearby, he decided, and pulled her onto his chest.

"So how does a Swedish princess come to have brown eyes and brown hair?" he asked, kissing her on the head.

"My father was a Mexican official. I think he raped my Mom, but she always denied it. He tried to get custody of us once, but she won in court. He stole Haley from school once, though. He had her for almost a month. I guess I'm just the suspicious sort, because I think he did something to her during that time, too. She wasn't the same when Mom got her back."

"What's his name?" he asked, rage burning in him like fire.

"Alphonsio Lopez de Cordova. He kept to the old traditions and is from a well-known family." She shifted against him and he felt he was drowning in the heat of her body.

But the regret underlying her words tugged at him, and he fought the impulse for one more quick ride before dawn.

"My mother married a man named Richard when I was nine. He raised us. He was a good man. When Mom died, he just seemed to fade away. He had a heart attack two years after she passed and then it was just me and Mormor and Haley." She kissed his chest and he sighed.

"I must find a place to go to ground," he told her.

"I have a cellar," she informed him. The vision around them turned to mist and she watched it go with a strange look of wonder on her face.

He dressed and let her lead him into the kitchen and through a door he had thought was simply a pantry. It led down into the cool Earth. He found himself unsurprised that it was meticulously clean, without even dust. It was not damp as most cellars were, but instead it smelled faintly of pine and the walls were lined with wine and ancient casks.

In the back was an old but clean and serviceable leather sofa. He stretched out on it, his legs hanging off of the end.

She was nervous. "Do you need anything? Is there anything you want? Should I bring a blanket?"

"Nothing. Just keep the sun out," he answered. "I am dead. I do not require comforts in the day when I am in the Earth."

She nodded and left. When the light went off, he found that it was even more tomb-like than he had guessed it would be. Yet it was clean and dry and he doubted anyone would know it was even there. He checked to be certain the light indicated that the alarm system was activated, and then let the day take him into the sleep of the dead.


	10. Dear Daddy

_Thank you again to those who reviewed! Again, sorry for the inconsistent chapter lengths... we ran into some remodeling snags today, lol. _

_Chapter 10 is a bit short, but it's action-packed..._

* * *

><p><strong>10. Dear Daddy<strong>

He was in Nombre de Dios, Durango, Mexico; not far from Cuidad Victoria. For a place called "Name of God," it was surprisingly uninspiring. But the municipal seat was there, and that was what Eric had come for. He approached them as a rich young American vampire, searching for land to purchase in the area.

He made no pretenses as far as wealth went. He spread it generously and he bribed copiously. It was in this area that the kidnapped girls were ending up. He had begun to suspect that rather than the vampires being behind it, instead the vampires were being used by humans for human purposes.

It really mattered little. Whomever was using his bar was going to regret it.

So he played the game, whoring and sucking and bribing around the town. There was no way he was going to keep a low profile as a six foot four inch [1.82 m] tall man with blond hair and green eyes. Especially not as a vampire.

It was easier to just be himself and use the system to get himself into the system. The problem was that, as an American vampire, he would have had no reason to be asking for American prostitutes. So he had come under one of his many aliases. He was Enrique del Norte from Spain.

He fucked his way through multiple prostitutes before he finally had dropped enough cash and done enough illegal activity and bribing to be offered an American prostitute. It was clear to him immediately as she was brought into the small, albeit clean room that she was heavily drugged. It would make her difficult to glamour, and he suspected it was intentional. Not to mention making her easier to control.

He made the evening pleasurable for her. If he had done nothing, she would have been punished. When he kicked her out and went to ground, he was frustrated. It was taking too long. He had been there for nearly eight weeks.

Two days later, he was invited to an exclusive party outside of town. The mansion was brimming with American prostitutes, but he saw nothing of Haley. That, however, didn't mean he didn't see familiar faces.

He didn't ask whose mansion it was, as that would have been an extreme indication that he was not what he appeared. Instead, he fucked his way through five prostitutes and watched two more with each other.

When the night was through and he went to ground, he didn't go far. He would rise the next night and search the place. He knew some of those girls, and knew as well that time had just become short. If any of them had said anything, he would be known to everyone before he even rose from the ground. He could only hope that they were frightened enough or smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

Furthermore, he had left Alexis in Pam's care. Her nightly bouts of terror were growing more difficult to deal with. It would be a relief to go home and reassure himself. Pam had explicit instructions to get her a wardrobe that showed off her body but didn't compromise her rather conservative style.

He felt like it had been forever since he had seen her, and the intensity of her emotions seemed to be growing. He scowled and sank into the ground. If he found out that she had disobeyed Pam again... he didn't even want to think about it.

That day, like the one before, he felt Alexis's continued emotional turmoil. It rose instead of falling, and by the time he climbed from the ground, he was convinced that something had gone wrong beyond Pam's continual presence in her life. It was frustratingly impossible to tell since every vampire near her wrought havoc on her.

"Well, well. What have we here. If it isn't Sheriff Northman. I never imagined it would be quite so easy to capture you."

Eric was enveloped in a silver net and a silver chain snapped around his neck as he climbed out of the earth.

"You went to ground in my very own back yard," the wiry, hard man continued.

Eric was dragged the rest of the way out of the ground by his neck, his hands and legs grasped by multiple men and chained with Silver before he could stop them as the net tightened around him. His fangs snapped out and he fought, but it did him no good. They had captured him before he had even risen.

In fact, he realized that they had been digging to try to get to him.

"It was my hope that the sun would take care of you," he was told in the man's heavy Spanish accent. "But I could not find your hole soon enough, nor did these lazy bastards dig fast enough. It is an unhappy world when you must put up with such incompetence."

He flicked his hand and turned away. Eric found himself dragged behind an ATV as the group returned to the house. He was dragged bodily up some stairs. But when they tried to drag him into the house, they stalled. Huffing and puffing, they pulled and twisted and couldn't get him inside.

Even with his face mangled by the ride there, his flesh torn and bleeding, Eric forced himself to laugh.

"Ah yes. Por favor entren," the leader said. Although the invitation to come in was in Spanish, it worked its magic and Eric was dragged inside.

He blinked dirt out of his eyes and looked around. To his horror and dismay, he looked into familiar brown eyes. They were bloodshot and her fear was palpable. It rose several levels as she saw him.

"Ah yes. You've met my daughter. Well, one of them."

He ignored Eric then, asking the men holding her arms, in Spanish, "Why is she injured? You were to bring her to me without harm."

Also in Spanish, one of the men replied, "She tried to run away four times. She bit me." He produced his hand in proof, and Eric saw that she hadn't just bitten him, but had bitten him so badly that his hand was torn open.

"How am I going to present her to Carlos in this condition?" Alphonsio asked the other man.

Before the other man could even react to run away, Alphonsio pulled the gun from his hip and shot both him and the other man holding Alexis's arms.

Eric was proud of her as she bolted immediately for the back door. But it was, of course, no use. She got further than he would have given her credit for, though. He felt her pain as she was grabbed by another of Alphonsio's men.

Alphonsio walked up to her and gripped her chin so hard even her bruises turned white.

"You will marry Carlos, and you will give him a boy. Your sister has failed and produced only females for him. If you also fail, both of you will die. I have wanted this union between our families all of my life."

He turned then to Eric and said, "I have to thank you, vampire. Carlos wanted nothing to do with her until you fixed her. Now he has agreed to marry her if she gives him a boy. If she gives him two boys, the second boy is mine. I will have an heir with the de Santos family and my family's name will not die out."

He lifted Eric's head. "I took Haley from your bar. You didn't even notice. So I took a couple more. You still didn't notice. Now I take what I want, when I want to. You have made me even wealthier," he smiled, a cheeky but cold smile.

Another man entered the room. He was, if it were possible, even more cold and hard than Alphonsio. He ignored Eric entirely.

"She's blemished," he said, looking at Alexis with the air of a man inspecting a horse. He reached out to open her blouse, and she batted his hands away.

He slapped her across the face so hard he knocked her down. A kick to her butt cheek and a command to get up made her glare at him with open loathing. He jerked her up and yanked her shirt off to the sound of tearing cloth and Eric raged, fighting the silver helplessly as the smell of his own burning flesh rose to his nostrils.

"Acceptable," the man that Eric knew had to be Carlos grunted, now in Spanish.

"What's that?" one of the men asked in Spanish.

Eric realized it wasn't just the scent of his own flesh that smelled of smoke. The house was on fire.

**OoOoOoO**

Alexis had hoped to simply use the fire to escape. She had never dreamed she would find Eric there. She'd had a lot of discussions with Sookie. She now knew that vampires would be flung from the house if you rescinded their invitation. But it had to be your house.

And as it happened, the house they were in wasn't Alphonsio's house at all. It was his residence, but he didn't own it. It had been her mother's bribe to Alphonsio to drop his suit for custody of them, but it had been put in Alexis's name when her mother died.

When Carlos turned away, she dodged around him and grabbed a chair. She jumped on Eric and wrapped herself around him, holding onto him and the chair with all of her strength. "I rescind your invitation to my house," she cried.

The jerk as he was flung out the door nearly took her head off. She ran for the house and slammed the door, shoving the chair under it. It wouldn't last long, but she hoped to get him free of the chains by the time they broke out. She scrambled to get the one off of his neck, and soon had his hands free. He gripped the chains on his feet himself and ripped them off, his flesh hissing.

The chair splintered. One more chain fell, and he grabbed her. The sound of gunfire blazed around them, and she felt a bullet burn a path through her stomach. Eric grasped her and leaped up into the air.


	11. It's the End of the World

**11. It's the End of the World**

Eric was running faster than any human on Earth could dream of running, but he was stumbling and nowhere near as fast as normal. She felt it each time he stumbled with a joggle of pain.

"Eric," she whispered. "Stop."

"Almost there," he told her.

"But you're—"

"I'll be fine," he told her. "We're almost there. I'll go to ground." His arms tightened, "You'll wait for me. You'll be safe if you just stay and wait."

He leaped into the air and they fell... slowly. Darkness rose around them and she felt an instant of panic. His arms tightened. She felt reassured.

He landed hard and she gasped through the pain. He laid her down carefully.

"Eric, are you dying?"

There was silence. "Yes," he finally admitted. "There's still silver in me. They dragged me far while I was under silver. It did as much damage because of the silver as if I was a human."

"I can help," she told him, feeling her own pain subside and knowing it was a bad sign.

"They threw a net on me," he told her. "It has embedded into my skin. It will be difficult to get to."

She realized that by 'difficult', he meant she would have to dig into his skin for it. "I can do it," she said softly.

His hand found hers and she asked as she felt along his clothing to find the netting, "Where are we?"

"An old abandoned mineshaft. Even if I don't manage to bury myself, we're protected from the sun here."

She chuckled. "So if you die, I can't get out."

"I will survive if you can find the silver," he told her. "I think I have the strength left to bury myself. If so, it will work faster and better."

She fell silent and began the process of digging the strands of silver out of him. He grunted in pain sometimes. After what felt like hours, she dug the last strand out of his foot. She leaned back.

"Alexis, I know you're injured, too."

"I'll be okay," she lied. "You cannot afford to give me any blood right now."

"I'm sorry you must suffer," he said quietly. "If I could help, I would."

"Eric."

"Yes?"

"I love you. You were right. I wasn't happy. My life was meaningless beyond Mormor and when she died, I think if I hadn't met you, I might have killed myself."

"Alexis-"

"You don't have much time, Eric. Please listen."

"It can wait," he told her. "I don't want it to be like this when you-"

"Please, Eric? I need to say this to you now. My father still has my sister. Anything could happen while you try to rescue her. Please?"

He fell silent. She held his hand in hers. "You were right when you said that I would know I was happy when I realized I was yours. And I was dead before I met you. Being without you these last weeks has made life meaningless and empty. I never recognized how pointless it all was."

"Alexis-"

She shook her head. "Go sleep, Eric. You said it yourself, humans come and go, but vampires are forever." She said it with a chuckle. "And if you can heal yourself and eat, then you can help me. So everything will be okay."

She felt him nod, "Tonight, Alexis."

"Tonight, my love."

Tears fell down her cheeks as he dug himself into the ground. When silence fell, she let her sobs fill it. There would be other humans for him. There were always more humans. But there would never be another Eric for her.

Crawling, she laid down across the spot he had burrowed into. She caressed the ground, longing for the man it separated her from. She didn't know a lot about human anatomy, but she'd watched enough TV to know she was in shock and that her blood had been poisoned. She was hallucinating already.

The ground beneath her seemed to breathe, and she smiled sadly.

"I had so much more to tell you," she whispered into the darkness. "You were so sweet to Mormor. I don't know how she knew I would love you, but she did. I wish I could explain to you how much in my life has changed with you in it. I'm sorry I lied to you. But I know you would have tried, and maybe died. You've always protected me since we met. Now it was my turn. For you, and for Pam."

She ran her hand across the cool ground and thought it strange that it felt so much like him. Soft to the touch but unyielding.

"I'm glad I got to tell you. I'm glad I got to love you. Please save my sister and my nieces. I know it's asking a lot, but I believe you can do it. Alphonsio can't get the drop on you again." She gritted her teeth as pain flowed into her again. "I wish I could have told you that the house is Pam's when I die. I willed this house to her, and the one in Arkansas to Haley. Haley wouldn't want this one and wouldn't know what to do with it. I wrote my will three weeks ago, when you didn't return for so long. I wonder what you will think when you find out. I should have told you, so you didn't think I put her over you."

She grew quiet, her tears still running down her cheeks. "Good-bye, Eric. Thank you for everything."

She smiled as the half-formed world around her finally coalesced. She sat at the bottom of the waterfall. The bed was gone, and there was only the sandy beach of the pool beneath it.

"Alexis?"

"Eric!" she turned to him and smiled.

"I'm dreaming?"

He smiled back. "Yes."

She felt a thrill of joy. "Will you..."

She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud.

But even in her dreams, he wouldn't let her get away with it.

He sat down behind her and pulled her hair off of her neck. "Will I what, Alexis?" He trailed kisses down her neck and across her shoulder. A shiver ran up her spine.

"Will you... lay with me?"

"That's it? All you want to do is lay around?"

She dug for all the courage she had and blurted, in such a rush that it came out seeming as a single word, "Will you make love to me?"

He turned her around and this time she had something to work with for these dreams.

He rolled her onto the sand and kissed her, his body heavy as his leg pressed between hers. She felt suddenly vulnerable and strange beneath him, because she was naked and had not realized it. But his hand found her breast and she forgot to be ashamed. She whimpered as his lips left hers and found her breast instead.

His hand slid down her body and between her legs. He chuckled slightly. "You're so wet," he told her softly, his voice low and sexy. And she was, she knew. She wanted him desperately.

His fingers found her clitoris and she bucked under him, the electricity of the touch rocking her. He could be in the sun here, but he hadn't lost his vampire speed, and his fingers flickered a fast as any vibrator. Within seconds, she was panting and gasping beneath him.

His eyes met hers, vivid and smiling. He kissed her again and then trailed kisses down her body. His tongue touched her and she jerked, surprised at the cool, delicious feel of him against her. He held her hips easily as they reacted against her will, jumping and twitching in time with his touch.

His fingers and his tongue teased her until she was panting and desperate to orgasm. He pulled away an instant before she did, and she groaned, her teeth grinding in disappointment.

"Why such a hurry, Alexis?" he whispered, nipping at her ear. "You haven't done your part yet, and you already think to take your pleasure?"

"I don't know what to do," she said, burying her face in his chest, embarrassed.

"Yes, you do," he said quietly in her ear. "Do for me what I did for you."

"But I-" she meant to say that she couldn't do it, that she feared he would think less of her if she did that. It was so bold, so...

He pulled her head back by the hair, his eyes glittering in the sunlight reflecting off of the pool behind her.

A thrill ran through her. "Yes, Eric."

He grinned; that sweet boyish grin that made her willing to do anything at all for him. He rolled over on his back, his arms crossed behind his head. She didn't know where to begin or what to do, so she just followed his lead and straddled one of his legs, then kissed him on the chest.

She let her hand slide down his body and found his penis cool and hard, but sleek and smooth to the touch. He groaned as she touched him and she felt a strange thrill run through her. It was powerful, that realization that she could make him react as he had done to her.

She relished the wonder of his body, the curves and planes of it. She kissed him as he had kissed her, trailing down his body until she found the soft hairs at the base of him. When she touched him lightly with her tongue, he bucked toward her and she smiled.

She controlled the reactions of this magnificent, sexy, powerful man. His body responded to her like a puppet and she found it intoxicating. He growled slightly as she tasted him again, and when she let her lips slip around him and he arched as she had, she thrilled to the experience of teasing him and drawing away when he twitched towards her.

Never, in her entire life, had she felt powerful. But in that moment, as she heard him groan when she slowed the pace of her sucking, a profound sense of herself as a woman settled over her. She had never imagined feeling that way, and it was not only the most beautiful moment of her life, but it was the saddest.

Much later, when she had touched and explored that forbidden part of him thoroughly, touching and tasting and licking every part of him, he dragged her up his body. Rolling over on top of her, he growled at her. "Enough of your teasing, little doe."

And he was inside of her and she was clinging to him as the bright blue skies opened up and rain sluiced over them, cool and tingling on her skin. He thrust inside of her and she, in her turn, opened for him. He thrust into her and claimed her and she gave herself to him without reservation.

"You are mine, Alexis," he murmured in her ear as he throbbed inside her, grunting with an animal passion that inflamed her.

She rose beneath him and as she orgasmed, the world ended. She felt the darkness come and she did not fear it. Eric's face drifted away and Alexis died.


	12. As We Know It

**12. As We Know It**

Eric was ripped from their shared dream so abruptly that for a moment, his consciousness wheeled in confusion. He felt her emotions draining away, and thought for a moment that she had lost consciousness herself.

But her heart no longer roared against the ground that imprisoned him. He quailed, struggling with the remnants of a once cataclysmic strength. It was insufficient. He felt tears come as the Earth pressed in around him.

He could not save her. In a few minutes, it would be too late. He wanted to let the sleep of day take him over. For a while, there would be no suffering, no pain... no sense of unyielding sorrow. He felt a longing for the True Death, because for the first time in his very, very long lifetime, a human had given her life for his—and he truly wished it could have been the opposite.

"Tonight, my love," she had said, knowing there would be no 'tonight'.

He ached. Their lives were so very short, and they threw them away so carelessly. It was hard to be a thousand years old, because there were so few surprises left. Vampires were predictable in their very unpredictability. Humans were predictable in that they reacted in the same way, if only with different words.

But Sookie had surprised him. He had coveted her for that precious ability to surprise him, but she was a faerie. Half faerie, really. But Alexis was human, and she had gone beyond surprising him. She had delighted him. Her willingness and the incredible pleasure that she took in his own pleasure had touched something in him he had thought long gone.

Now it would be lost to him for another thousand years, if another like her were even born then—and if, in the ocean of humanity, he stumbled upon her.

Sleep stole upon him in the darkness, imprisoning his mind and stealing his thoughts.

He woke and considered spending another night in the darkness. But her body lay above him, and he would not leave it for the rats and the vermin. He would not let rain come and carry it away, lost to the bowels of the Earth.

He would do his duty to her and he would burn her so that if the Indians were right and the soul could only rise home on the mists of the wind and the smoke, then she would be free. Perhaps to come to him again, if such a thing were possible, as the Buddhists believed.

He crawled from the ground, still aching. He needed to feed. But he would not until he had fulfilled the rites of her passage from life.

He rose, dusting himself off.

"I was beginning to think you were going to stay down there," Pam said acerbically.

"Pam," he said. "It took you long enough to get here." Too long.

"You only called me three nights ago. And there was trouble at home, but I see already that you know that. I couldn't reach you on your cell. Your inbox is full."

"Alexis was abducted." He knew already.

"They took her in the day," Pam told him. "There was nothing I could do. I felt you call, but I was tracing them. When I got there, the house was burned down. So I came here, since your call came from here."

"You should know, Eric-"

She sounded apprehensive, fearful. One of the things he loved about Pam was that he couldn't read her. He was uncomfortable when she sounded like this.

"It can wait," he told her. "I'm filthy and I have things to see to before-" He looked at her closer. "You're filthy."

"Yes," she said dryly. "I've ruined my shoes, as a matter of fact. But about that-"

"Really, Pam, it's going to have to wait."

"Eric," she snapped. "Listen to me for once in your life!"

He gripped her and lifted her, forcing himself not to tremble. "Watch your fucking mouth, Pam."

"You told me to choose a Progeny, Eric."

He dropped her. "Yes. We will deal with that when we get home."

"Now, Eric," she defied him. He snarled at her, his fangs coming out.

"Here she comes now," Pam said, her voice droll and unconcerned. He glared at her and turned to look up the mine shaft.

A hand gripped him and he looked down. Reaching down, he helped Pam's Progeny climb out of the ground and then stared, dumbstruck.

"Pam, what have you done?"


	13. And I Feel Fine

_I will reply to your reviews soon, I promise! I didn't want to spoil the surprise, and now I have to dig up flooring. I'll be back and I'll answer your awesome reviews, I promise. :) Thank you so much, you guys rock!_

* * *

><p><strong>13. And I Feel Fine<strong>

"I chose a Progeny, as you commanded." Pam replied. "And broke a nail doing it."

"Not her," Eric growled. "Not her! She cannot be a vampire!"

"I knew you would never turn her yourself," Pam said.

"Damned right, I wouldn't have!" Eric growled. "She's too... fragile, too... docile. She'll never survive as a vampire!"

Alexis's hand touched his cheek.

"How could you do this?" Eric demanded.

"You care for her," Pam said. "I care for you. It wasn't a hard choice. She'll be fine, if we can get her past the whole mousy thing."

Alexis was touching him, running her hand over his skin, down his chest. It was arousing and distracting. She was cool and dead and somehow her touch still lit him on fire with intense lust.

"She is not meant to be a vampire!" he growled, refusing to be distracted—much.

"So kill her, and I'll pick someone else," Pam told him nonchalantly. She stood up, dusting herself off some more. "Go ahead. She's weak as a newborn kitten still. It should be no problem."

"You know I cannot," he snarled at her. He couldn't bring himself to kill her. He wouldn't have turned her himself, Pam was right. He would have rather lived without her than subject her to this. And that was why he was so furious with Pam.

Except he wasn't.

He wanted to be. He should be. But he was grateful that she had salvaged what little she had of Alexis. Though training would have to start all over from the beginning. A newborn had even less impulse control than a human.

"I'm hungry," Alexis said quietly as he hugged her.

Eric turned a gimlet glare on Pam. "She's your Progeny, teach her."

Pam sighed. "The things I do for you," she grumped. She began to climb out. "Well, come on, Mouse," she said to Alexis.

To Eric's great surprise, Alexis looked at him one more time, and climbed after her Maker.

He watched her go, the darkness no barrier to his vision. Bloody tears tracked down his face. He wasn't sure if it was a second chance or if it was the end of the Alexis he had known and cared for deeply enough that he would have given up his life for her if he'd been able to escape the ground.

Now it was not a choice and he didn't know what to do besides go feed. He climbed from the mine the same way the women had, using roots and handholds. He was still too weak for flight. He flitted in the direction he knew the town to be. He found several people in a row, glamouring each and drinking from them, leaving them alive.

When he was refreshed and once more filled with the magical, sustaining life of humankind, he flitted back to the mine shaft top, where he found Pam sitting on a fallen tree, obviously disgruntled.

"How bad was it?" he asked.

"It's ruined. They're brand new, too. My favorites."

"Not the shoes, Pam. Feeding your Progeny." He tried to be patient.

"It was fine."

"Define 'fine', Pam."

"She's going to be a problem for you, Eric. But not for the usual reasons. She's still unnaturally compliant. She did everything I told her to do like a zombie. It's creepy, in fact."

"She's your Progeny, Pam."

"But Eric," Pam said, patting him on the chest, "She was my gift to _you_. I didn't want Progeny. You wanted me to make one, and now I have. You got what you wanted, and who you wanted. I'm not going to raise her. I'd be a terrible mother."

"Pam!" He tried to express his anger. She had turned Alexis, she was responsible for her. Eric would have just saved her or let her die.

"I'm not going to do it, Eric. I'll kill her, but I won't be saddled with her."

"If you were anyone else-"

"Yeah, you would rip me apart, blah, blah, blah. I know you want her, Eric. You train her. Look how well you did with me."

"Not very, you disobedient wench," he snapped, then kissed her on the forehead. She was capricious, difficult, and so very dear.

She gave him an odd look. "I really do think it's going to be a problem for you, Eric. She's not going to be a very good vampire."

"I would have turned her myself if I thought she would," he admitted. "But I understand why you did it. We have to focus first on saving her sister and her nieces."

"Must we?" Pam asked.

"Yes, Pam, we must. I'm going to shut Alphonsio's trafficking ring down. He was stealing people from my area, from my own bar. I will not allow that." He stood, considering, watching Alexis sitting on the ground not far from them. She was in apparently deep contemplation of something on the ground.

"I'm going to bring in mercs. Not local ones, either," he told Pam finally.

"So we're going back to civilization for a while?" she asked.

"I think the locals would be offended to hear you say that, Pam," he teased.

"When the locals start selling Prada, they can be offended."

"Come, Alexis," Eric said. "We're leaving."

"Yes, Eric," she chirped, and he thought it was possibly the strangest thing he'd ever seen. Were vampires even allowed to be cheerful?

"See what I mean?" Pam asked him. "She's annoying and she's only a few hours old."

It took four nights to get back to Shreveport. Eric and Pam took Alexis to see Bill.

"You turned her?" Bill said, surprise written on his face like text on a book page. He turned to Alexis. "Did you want to be a vampire?"

"So far, it seems better than being dead was."

Bill chuckled. "You may change your mind with time."

She looked at him in silence.

"Tell me what happened," Bill told her.

"It's none of your business," she snapped.

Eric hissed, astounded. She had shown not a single evidence of independent thought since being turned. He couldn't believe that she decided to assert herself to Bill of all vampires.

Bill gripped her and lifted her off of her feet. "I am your King," he snarled at her. "Being a newborn is no excuse for defiance."

"I didn't choose to be a vampire. You're not my King," she argued.

"Alexis! You will obey your King," Eric snapped, his fangs clicking out.

Her eyes flicked to his, surprised. "Yes, Eric," she said. "My Liege, I am sorry," to Bill.

Bill dropped her, sending Eric a searching look.

"Tell me what happened," Bill said again.

Alexis didn't look at him, and Eric felt a pang. She was a vampire now, she was no longer His. They were, to some degree, equals. Yet, of course, he would always be a thousand years older than her, and so they could never truly be equal.

She explained, briefly outlining the entire situation as succinctly and unemotionally as possible. Eric found himself a little unnerved at how well she could take away all of their lovemaking and the nights he had spent watching her and turn it all into a sort of cold, clinical assessment of the situation.

What surprised him the most was that it hurt.

As a vampire, it was appropriate that she should see it that way. It was a common change, where the emotions were subsumed by the lusts, the selfishness, the hunger for blood. Eric had sat helping her find a True Blood that she could drink, and she had listened obediently and then asked how often she would be forced to do that rather than 'proper' eating.

She confused him. It was nothing he had expected from her. Her defiance was not like her human self. Her compliance to him was not like a vampire.

He felt he didn't know her any longer. It ached in him like a burr under the saddle.

Plus, she looked nothing like she had. Her eyes were perfect now, as all vampires' eyes were. Her hair was flawless. She dressed impeccably and looked elegant and refined. Despite her reticence, Pam had insisted that Alexis 'give up the mouse'.

He had not yet considered if he would sleep with her. Maybe she didn't want him anymore. He didn't know. How could he know? He couldn't feel her, and she didn't blush anymore, she didn't... she was so hard to read.

He did not like uncertainty.

Bill, to Eric's surprise, promised his support and even gave Eric troops. His only explanation, "Your territory is mine. Do not waste them."

Eric took Alexis back to Fangtasia. He sat on the stage in his customary chair, and watched her as the human women vied for his attention. She was not vying for his attention. In fact, she had drawn the attention of a young human man, who was asking if he could buy her a drink.

To Eric's irritation, she smiled and leaned over to say something in his ear. The young man blushed and smiled back.

"What's wrong with her?" Eric asked Pam. "She can't get anything to eat without fucking them, too?"

Pam raised an eyebrow. "She's hardly fucking him, Eric. She's not even eating him. Yet."

"It's obvious that she's going to," he growled at her.

"She hasn't so far, though I have encouraged her to. She seems to be having a difficult time giving up her human ideas about sex."

"Why would you be encouraging her?" he glared, leaning over in the chair to stare at her.

"You've barely looked at her since she was born, Eric. She needs to move on since you have. She's bored and shit. Blah blah blah, misses her job, blah blah. She's probably even more bored than she admitted, since getting her to talk about anything gives me a headache. I thought I liked the quiet until her."

He grunted. "She can eat women, then. She doesn't have to have men all the time."

"She doesn't like women," Pam said. "She likes men."

Eric glared at her.

"If you want her to eat women, Eric, then you tell her. I would rather bloody my head against a concrete wall than try to get her to eat men again, much less get her to start eating women." She gestured toward Alexis. "I don't think she ever flirted a day in her human life."

Eric looked over at where Alexis was smiling again at the human.

A young blond was standing at his feet, asking his guard if she could approach him. He waved her up to the dais with a crooked finger. She came to him with a coy smile on her face and she irritated him. "Come with me," he told her.

She followed obediently, and he grabbed Alexis's arm, dragging her along with him and his blond snack. He shoved Alexis into the office and then dragged the blond in. He pushed the blond into Alexis.

"Glamour her," he instructed Alexis.

He was outraged when she crossed her arms. "No. I don't like women, Eric, I-"

His fangs snapped out and he jerked her against him, her hair twisted in his fist. He held back little, since she was no longer human and did not need kid gloves. "Do what I tell you to do," he snarled at her.

She stepped back, the look on her face mutinous. But she turned to the blond and he saw her start to try to focus her will.

He sat down on the edge of his desk, resting his cupped fingers on his chin. "Not like that," he told her. "Take her face in your hands and act like you appreciate the dinner she's going to provide to you."

Her eyes snapped to his, angry and turbulent. She looked back and the blond and pulled her down onto the sofa. She cupped the human's face and Eric was surprised to feel a sharp stab of lust run through him.

"Look at me," Alexis said to the blond, who was now terrified, having sensed the strong cross-currents in the room.

Their eyes met and Eric watched her take dominion over the human's will.

He sat down behind the blond and pulled her hair away from her neck. He realized he hadn't been this aroused by watching another vampire feed for a very long time. Alexis's face was still mutinous, but he knew that the blond's blood and heartbeat were taking their toll on her self-control.

He watched Alexis feed, those soft brown eyes closed and her heart-shaped face buried in the blond's neck. It was exquisite, the combination of savagery and doe-like innocence. He heard the human's heart beat slow and almost said something, but Alexis was already pulling away, sealing her wounds and licking her.

He decided that he had pushed Alexis as far as he could for this time, and turned the human around. "Go home," he told her, giving her brief instructions on how to care for herself and replenish her blood.

Then he stood over Alexis, the blood trailing down her chin so at odds with her sweet face and submissive personality. He dragged her to her feet and kissed her, unconcerned with the fresh blood, even enjoying and savoring it.

But she pulled away, and he jerked her closer. "You are still mine, Alexis," he said in her ear.

"I am Pam's progeny," she said. "You don't want me now that I'm not a human anymore."

"Why-ever would you think that?" he asked.

"It's obvious, Eric," she said, squirming to get away from him. He held her easily. "Even Pam knows you can barely stand to be in the same room with me."

"We're flying to Mexico tonight to get your sister. When we come back, we'll talk about this. Pam gave you to me, Alexis. You are still mine."

"I don't want to be yours anymore," she said. "You told me I could have my house back. Well, I want it back and I want—"

"No," he snarled.

"Release me," she said, her voice sad and lost.

"No."

"Why not?" she argued. "I was good enough when I was one of them. Now that I am like you, you can't stand me."

"That's not true," he told her. But it was.

He couldn't stand not knowing if she still loved him. He was floundering without his connection to her and he feared the uncertainty of relating to her without that sure and certain knowledge of how she felt.

As if she understood his thoughts, she said, "I've never felt better. And I've never felt worse. Sometimes I want to kiss Pam and sometimes I want to wake up in the day and kill her. But mostly, I just want to go home."


	14. Eric Gives In

_Sorry for small/short updates. Removing linoleum from a wood floor is teh suk [sic]. Renovations start tomorrow and we're not done. So again, I will get back to you who have reviewed recently, I swear! I've been spending my spare rest moments on story instead... hopefully that will entice you to forgive me for the review reply delay? Pretty please? :)_

_Speaking of reviews, thanks a ton to those who have reviewed, and I also appreciate the Faves. With no further ado..._

* * *

><p><strong>14. Eric Gives In<strong>

"The house is still mine, and they don't know I'm a vampire," Alexis said again.

Eric looked at Pam. "Will you tell her?"

"Newborn or not, her plan is better than yours." Pam flipped another page. "Though since you are a vampire now, permission to enter has becoming meaningless, so any and all of us can go inside whenever we want to." The last was said to Alexis.

"I still think-"

"You aren't thinking," Eric told her. "I will not allow you to endanger yourself in such a fashion."

"She's my sister, I have the right-"

"I will not allow it," Eric reiterated.

"Why not?"

Leaning back in his seat, he said without thinking, "I liked you better when you didn't argue with every word that came out of my mouth."

"If you ever liked me at all," she muttered, turning to look out the window.

He sat down in the seat beside her, and pulled her back against him. She sat rigid for a moment, then melted. He put his cheek against her hair. It was cool now, no longer heated from her body as it once was. "I am trying to keep you safe."

She pulled away. "Why? You wish I was dead, you just don't have the stomach to kill me."

"That's not true, Alexis. Killing is not something I hesitate to do. If I wanted you dead, you would not be here."

"You're lying to yourself, Eric. I know that you think I'm a stupid, clueless baby. Pam thinks I'm useless and irritating. I don't talk much, and people have always thought I was an idiot because of it. But I'm not, Eric. And I'm not incompetent, either." She straightened. "Just because I don't enjoy making decisions doesn't mean I'm not able to." Her brown eyes finally met his as she said, "And just because I was willing to obey you doesn't mean you were always right. You walked away from me, I didn't walk away from you."

"I didn't walk away, and I never said you were stupid or clueless." He was angry, but it was a strange sort of anger. It wavered and seemed to rise and fall as if it weren't entirely justified. He had to work to maintain it else it die and blow away on the breeze of uncertainty.

"Vampires are not so different from humans, Eric. Little of what is said is ever stated directly. I think that if aliens watched us interact they would never have any idea of what we were really saying. Humans or vampires."

"I don't wish you were dead."

"I thought you cared about me, when I was human."

"And I thought you loved me," he growled at her.

"So did I. Until I realized that I never really knew you at all. Until it dawned on me that it was never personal for you, and you weren't trying to protect me at all. You were just sadistic."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," Pam snapped from behind him.

To his surprise, Alexis laughed at her. "Pam doesn't know me, either. I made my choices. I want to do this because it's my fault that Haley was taken. I didn't know it before, but now I do. And I want to help because I'm responsible for all of this."

"No, you aren't. You didn't make your father abduct Haley-"

"It should have been me," she told him. Her face was grim and tight. "When we were little, Carlos came to see us, to pick between us. He's thirteen years older than us. He got to select his future bride. He picked me at the time. But I didn't like him; I thought he was cruel. So I made myself nothing and nobody so he wouldn't want me. Instead of leaving us alone, he took Haley."

"You being a vampire makes him no less cruel," Eric told her. "You cannot blame yourself for his decision to take Haley."

"You cannot blame yourself for your family's death. One man, no matter your prowess in battle, could not have saved them. Yet you blame yourself anyway."

"That is none of your concern!" He had definitely liked her better when she was afraid to say things like that to him.

"I think she knows you just fine," Pam said, still thumbing through the magazine. Looking up at him, she shrugged. "What?"

"You're only trying to keep me alive because you don't want to feel guilty for wanting me dead."

Pam's eyes met his as she slowly lowered the fashion magazine, and she said. "You know, what bothers me the most about that sentence is that I actually understood it."

He could gather women like sand into a bucket, but he'd be damned if he could live with them.

"You should be on my side," he finally said to Pam.

"I'm always on your side, Eric. Except when you act stupid and unreasonable. I'm so glad you don't do it very often. Or didn't." She began to inspect her fingernails.

Alexis was back to staring out the window. He wondered if there was something he could do to get her to understand.

"You know, you should really just fuck her. It would make you both feel better and I could get back to important things like Vogue."

He sat down beside Alexis, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "There is a better way, Alexis. It doesn't have to be done that way. We can just go in and take them."

"He'll know you're coming. He'll be ready in some way," she answered, still looking away.

"Alexis, do you really think you have what it takes to kill a man?"

Her voice was soft. "Eric, I know what I am. Women like me hide for a reason. I know I'm not a leader. I'm a follower. This world... it hates followers, Eric. It squishes us, it destroys us, it hates us. We hide because the men most attracted to us are sadistic ones like Carlos." She turned to look at him and he felt a pain run through him that was both unfamiliar and yet becoming more familiar the longer she was a vampire. "Like you." She shook her head. "You are not what I thought you were."

Anger rose in the wake of the pain. "And what did you think I was, soft?"

"I thought you were a leader worth following simply for the sake of love and loyalty. But now I know that you care only for fear. I will not follow out of fear alone, Eric. As I found a way to escape Carlos, I will find a way to escape you."

"No need to escape, Alexis. I am doing this because they have put my bar into legal jeopardy. It's my duty to the vampires and even the humans of my area to protect them from the backlash if this is discovered and reported. I do not intend to fail. You may do this your way. But if you fail at it, I will simply burn them all out, including your sister and your nieces. So before you decide that you will pursue this idea, consider that."

"I am terrified, Eric. But it is my nature to be loyal. It is my nature to desire the protection and the safety of the people I love."

"And you think my nature is so very different?"

"I didn't."

She would not speak to him further, and he began to understand Pam's irritation with her. The flight was over, and they disembarked to find the promised American mercenary forces at the designated place. The plan was simple and it was elegant to Eric's way of thinking. They would go to the property, fight their way in, destroy Alphonsio and Carlos, and bring the women they could back home.

But Alexis wanted to try to trade herself for her sister and get captured. She would then save the girl and her children when the shooting began. She believed that she could do it with her vampire strength. Eric had to admit that if it were any other vampire, he could accept that she could probably do it. But Alexis hadn't killed anyone yet, and she was so emotionally fragile.

If she had to kill to survive, he didn't believe she had it in her. For all that she had fought him, it had been her first impulse to flee, not to fight. She was prey. She had the mentality of prey. She had the look of prey. And even she knew it.

But he somehow knew that this was one time and one issue in which he could not push or control her. The friction between them made it difficult to begin with, but there was the added factor that she would defy him for her sister... and it was not entirely unreasonable that it should be so.

In fact, he found himself admiring that courage and the loyalty that it showed. Loyalty that, had she not been made a vampire, might have been his. He walked to the waiting car with his head down, wondering why that realization made him want to tear everyone and everything in the vicinity apart.

He let her get a taxi from the airport to a local vampire-ready hotel, and caught Pam's look.

"She's going to die," Pam told him. He was surprised to hear regret in her voice.

He lifted a brow at her.

"What? She's quiet. Unlike your Sookie, who couldn't be quiet for more than a few seconds at a time and who thought we were meant to be bosom buddies."

"She is your Progeny," Eric reminded her.

"I know," Pam told him. "She was a good choice, I think. Though she still refuses to spend your money properly."

He grinned. "You're losing your touch, Pam."

She snorted. "I got her into Gucci shoes for the plane ride tonight. It would have helped if you'd noticed."

"I was preoccupied with your pink nails," he answered, knowing that she loved it when he noticed her pink.

"If you get yourself killed for that newborn, Eric, I swear I will torture her for the rest of her life."

"You're so delicious when you're vicious, Pam."

"Thank you, Eric."

He sat back and smiled.

The next night, Alexis's abduction went exactly as planned. They took her right out of the street, and Eric followed them from overhead. That was the beauty of humans; they never looked up, especially at night.


	15. The Truth About Haley

**15. The Truth About Haley**

She was handcuffed and dragged into a car. They arrived at the mansion, where cranes and bulldozers had excavated and begun restoration of the burned parts. They dragged her ungently up the stairs and into a room, where she was handcuffed to a chair by two handcuffs. She almost smiled. They had no idea what she was now.

An hour or two later, Haley came in. Alexis leaned forward. "Haley! I missed you so much! I'm here to rescue you and your girls. Where are they being held?"

"Rescue me?" she laughed and Alexis smiled. She had no idea.

Haley walked over and slapped her hard across the face. "I don't want to be rescued, you bitch. And you burnt my house!"

Alexis gaped. What had come over her sister?

She shook her head, laughing slightly. "My girls? They're dead, Alexis. Carlos didn't want girls, and neither did Dad. There's no point in having useless brats lying around."

Alexis felt like someone had thrown her into icewater. "What?"

"You've always followed me around like a little kid. Everyone loved you. You were so obedient. Never tried drugs, never snuck out at night, never did anything you weren't told to do first. And you were prettier than me, too. When Carlos picked you over me, I hated you. The worst part was that you didn't even want him. You had no idea what you had." She picked Alexis's hair up and dropped it.

"And now, you're doing it again. You're the pretty one again, and still so sweet and obedient. Who would have thought you would come right back here like this? And at such a terrible time. We're under attack by vampires, Alexis. That must terrify you." She picked up a pair of scissors, unaware that by tomorrow morning, Alexis's hair would be back to exactly the way it was now.

Alexis felt like someone had punched her in the gut. Her sister was no captive. And she had killed her own newborn babies because some man didn't want them. There was submissiveness, and then there was... whatever Haley had become. Or maybe had always been.

As if she knew her thoughts, Haley said, "I hated you so much. When Dad said you were up here, he told me to stay away. But I was never the obedient one when it wasn't in my own best interests, that was always you." She came around in front of Alexis. "I hate you. I tried to kill you several times. I pushed you off of the bannister when we were five. That car accident with Mormor when we were seventeen? No accident. I tried to take you both out at the same time. With you dead and Mom dying, I would have had everything."

She hefted the scissors. "When Carlos sees you with no hair, Alexis, he isn't going to want you. Dad will have to wait and see if I can produce boys." Her smile was nothing short of malicious. "I would kill you now, except that they'd probably beat me for that. Carlos might even kill me. He loves me, but he has a real temper."

"He only loves you because you're pretty. But you've put on some pounds since you killed your babies, Haley. How many did you kill, anyway?"

She shrugged, "Three. Twins, the first ones. I only killed one of them at first, but then I realized I didn't know which one would be like you, so I killed them both, just to make sure."

"You're insane," Alexis said, her heart breaking. "Mormor said that you had run off to get married. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better, but she knew."

"Grany was an old bitch who stunk of old lady perfume and still tried to give me fucking cookies and milk when I was eighteen fucking years old. I'm glad the old cunt is dead. She loved you better than me, too."

"You treated her like she wasn't even a person. She kept trying, anyway," Alexis said. "I never realized that you weren't just airheaded, but you are actively malicious."

"Yeah, yeah. Fuck you. All of your straight As and your college degrees couldn't get you Carlos once he saw how ugly you had become. He wanted me, Alexis. And he's going to want me again. And once he sees how ugly you are, he's going to kill you."

Within her, the vampire rose like a phoenix. Alexis ripped the cuffs casually off of the chair, snapping it easily. Fury boiled up in an oceanic froth and she laughed as Haley realized too late her peril. She dodged for the door, and Alexis was there in front of her.

Alexis felt something she hadn't felt before. She experienced for the first time the very real vampiric desire to kill. But she was a thinking person and she had once loved this woman. Which made the betrayal that much worse, and it made it that much more wicked that she had murdered Alexis's nieces.

Alexis grasped Haley by the hair and flitted out of the house, ignoring the stunned stares of the men she flitted past. Haley screamed and shrieked and Alexis found that she didn't care. Her mind was consumed by the image of Haley snuffing the life out of three infants. She flitted across the lawn, then circled back around until she entered the staging area where Eric stood with Pam, talking to the leader of the mercenary group.

Eric lifted his eyebrow. "That's quite the rescue," he said, his voice droll.

"She did not need rescuing," Alexis told him. "She killed my nieces as they were born. I am going to kill her, but I..."

She held the struggling Haley by the hair at arm's length. Still young, she breathed heavily, trying to get the deep breathing technique to still and calm her. "I want her to suffer, Eric." Her fangs were out and she knew she was acting like the baby the pair thought she was. "She tried to kill Mormor."

"Come with me," Eric said. "Bring her." He gave Pam a significant look, and they led her behind a small trailer. She dragged the struggling Haley behind her.

Pam yanked Haley out of Alexis's hand, and Alexis bristled. She pushed the other woman hard, so that she stumbled. Turning to Alexis, she said, "Your first lesson in hunting, Alexis. Always let your prey have a head start."

Alexis's eyes turned to Eric. He had given her a head start, too. He smiled that boyish smile at her. Then he turned and looked after Haley, who was running for the woods. "Lesson two, let her think she's going to make it."

"Lesson three," Pam said. "Turn her around and make her go the other way and let her think she's going to make it again." She flitted in front of Haley, her fangs snapping out. She hissed, and Haley screamed and ran the other way.

They watched her run the other direction, and Alexis was surprised to find that she felt no pity at all for the sobbing Haley. She had loved her so long and refused to see her true nature. She had loved her and in return she had tried to kill her and tried to kill her beloved Mormor. She could find no pity inside herself at all.

"Always," Eric said, flitting over to stop Haley with his fangs out and a wicked look on his face, "play with your food. It makes them taste better." He flitted back behind Alexis. "Can you smell her terror?"

Alexis lifted her face and let the current of the breeze play over it. He was right. She smelled terror. She wasn't sure how she knew that was it, but she smelled it, as sweet as a fragrant rose once was to her. "Yessss," she hissed, her lids heavy with the heady, intoxicating scent.

He was pressed against her back, his hand splayed across her belly. "That is what made you so irresistible."

"The fear is gone now," she told him. "I can look at you without it."

"Yes," he said low in her ear while Pam turned Haley again. His hand ran up her body to her ribs and pulled her back against him. "I suspected as much. But you're still sweet," he said, his head moving her hair aside as he nipped at her neck with his fangs.

He walked up to Haley, who was now going almost in circles. Turning to look at Alexis, he said, "Are you not hungry? I think she's well done."

Alexis flitted over beside him, and the three of them descended on Haley. Alexis forgot she had even been her sister in the overwhelming sensuality of the experience of drinking together with Eric and her Maker. When they were done, Eric showed her how to hide the body while Pam went to clean herself up.

"We are not done for tonight," Pam reminded her when she got back to the encampment, where the men and women there acted completely as if they hadn't heard screams for the last two hours while Eric, Pam, and Alexis 'played' with their food.

"We have superior numbers and firepower," Eric said. "But we will not underestimate them. They have the home field advantage as well as desperation. And from my research into his activities, your father is a strong strategist."

"I'm dead," Alexis said. "I don't choose to claim him as my father anymore."

Eric gave her an odd look.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Pam's rubbing off on you." Then he said, "You make a better vampire than I expected."

"Sorry to hear it," Alexis said. "I'll try to curb my lusts."

He grinned at her. "I sure hope not."

Then he flitted away to speak to the mercenary leader again, whose name was, so far as she could tell, "Epping." They left and she stood trying to find some sense of remorse. There was sadness. There was a deep feeling of betrayal. Confusion. Even fear and uncertainty.

But she could not dredge up remorse. Her Mormor's face and nameless, faceless babies rose before her and killed all regret before it could be born within her.

"Second thoughts?" Pam asked.

"I expected them," Alexis told her. "But surprisingly, I can't regret it." She looked at Pam. "Why is it easier to trust you than my own family?"

Pam chuckled. "I'm your Maker. You can't help yourself."

"I don't feel that much different. Except that I don't think I would have wanted to kill her before." She shifted as Epping called out orders. "I think I want to kill Carlos, as well. He helped her and supported her killing those babies."

"Babies terrify me," Pam admitted. At Alexis's look, she said, "Oh honey, even I wouldn't eat them. I can't get past the smell."

She walked away and Alexis grinned. She liked Pam, and it didn't really matter to her if it was because Pam was likeable in spite of the hard surface she cultivated, or if it was because Pam was her Maker. Alexis looked over to find Eric watching her, his face completely without expression as he gave Epping orders.

He looked away, and Alexis followed in Pam's wake to move toward the front lines.

"This is going to be dangerous, even for us," Eric whispered in her ear a moment later. This time, she had heard him coming. "I want you to be careful. Don't take risks. You're still a newborn, so your impulse control is not developed."

She sighed, surprised she had to activate her lungs in order to do so. Apparently her automatic functions had ceased and since she wasn't focused on doing so, she wasn't breathing. She tried to set aside her curiosity about the fact and turned to him.

"It's moments like this that almost trick me into thinking you actually care, Eric."

His expression didn't change, he remained still, staring at her with a brooding, closed look on his face. "You are my Progeny's Progeny. I have to care."

"Well, that makes it so much easier for you, doesn't it."

"We don't have to fight, Alexis."

"Is that what we're doing? It's my first fight, sorry I'm not better at it." She walked away from him to climb into her designated vehicle for the drive to the mansion. By the time the night was through, it would be utterly destroyed, she suspected.

She crossed her arms. Too bad Haley wouldn't be there to see it. She winced at the thought, but comforted herself with the knowledge that Haley was a baby-killer and had tried to kill Mormor. But she found that the part of it all that bothered her the most was that she had always thought Haley was just... precocious.

She didn't really understand how Haley had become the monster she had. She had never truly suspected. Just as she hadn't thought that Mormor would betray her by giving half of her inheritance to a vampire—particularly the priceless antiques that had been in their family for generations.

And she had believed that Eric cared. She had thought he meant to protect her and that what he did wasn't meant to harm so much as to wake her up to the realities of life.

She was zero for three, if she didn't include her high school crush on the biggest asshole of the school, the time she accepted a date from a coworker who told everyone the next day that he had 'nailed' her, or the... She shook her head.

So far, she had only successfully discerned the nature of her father and his cohort, Carlos. Beyond that, she was blind and dumb and stupid. How long would it be before Pam betrayed her? How long before Eric tore her apart for a simple mistake?

A chill ran down her spine. They had arrived, though, so she let the thought go. She had to face her reality and acknowledge that she was the worst person in the world at understanding other people. The truth about Haley had completely surprised her to the point where she was unbalanced and couldn't focus.

She almost told Eric she didn't think she should be in the battle, but he would say she was weak and prey and shouldn't be a vampire. She sucked in her courage and she moved in with the mercenaries, smoothing the black clothing and double-checking that her hair was still bound in its braid.

They moved in on the house. They were within a few yards before the sound of gunfire erupted. Alexis smiled. This time, unless they were wooden bullets or silver, they would not harm her. She flitted across the lawn and snapped the neck of one of the men on the porch while Pam did the same with the second man.

"Very good," Pam whispered, and Alexis heard her clearly. They climbed up to the balcony and entered through the second floor. Right into a trap. The window was slammed shut behind Alexis before she could react, and one of the men fired a net. It was laced in silver and they were on her with silver handcuffs as the silver sliced into her brutally.

She saw Pam beside her, though Pam was doing better than she was. She threw one of them across the room and ripped part of the netting before she was set upon and subdued.

Gunfire blazed all around the house now, and Alexis wept bloody tears as she looked at Pam. This was all her fault. Pam would have taken better care of herself if she hadn't been focused on training Alexis.

A kick landed in her side, and Alexis grunted. "Where's Haley, you bitch?" Alphonsio asked her. "Now that you're a vampire, you're fucking useless. I want my daughter back."

"She killed her babies," Alexis told him. Maybe he hadn't known.

"Nobody wants girls," Alphonsio told her. "They are useless. Just look at you."

"Eric is going to rip your spine out and eat you," Pam told him.

He chuckled. "I'm not worried. It did cost a lot of money to line the walls with silver-laced wallpaper, but when it comes to my grandchildren and the continuation of my empire, it's a small expense. Your Eric cannot get inside this house unless we open windows for him as we did for you. You would never have escaped earlier if the door hadn't happened to be open due to the renovations already."

He kicked Alexis again, then again. "You will all three be killed by the sun come morning, I promise you that. But not until you've told me where Haley is."

A knock on the door interrupted him.

"There are human soldiers, Senor," the man at the door told him in Spanish. Alexis spoke it well enough to understand the gist of what was said and that was all.

"Hiding behind humans? Not very vampiric of you," he said snidely to them before closing the door, leaving them with human men with guns standing over them and their flesh smoking from the silver.

"I am so going to love killing that man," Pam said.

"If we get out of here," Alexis said quietly.

"Eric will get us out. And he'll kill anything and everything that gets in his path," Pam said with as much assurance as if she were discussing nail polish colors.

"But the silver-"

"You think Eric will let a little thing like silver stop him?" Pam dismissed her concerns easily.

They were whispering in English, and one of the humans was clearly offended by it. He kicked Alexis and snapped, "Shut up" in a heavy Spanish accent.

As if the action had opened a sort of flood gate, the men began chatting amongst themselves. From what little Spanish she understood, Alexis immediately knew that it was a very bad thing for Pam and herself.

"I think they're going to rape us," she whispered to Pam.

"Yes, I am fluent in Spanish. An older form of it, but not that much has changed." She twisted to look toward the door. "If they do, they'll have to remove some of this silver. When they do, I will kill them all."

Alexis wished for just a part of Pam's confidence—in either Eric or herself. But not even Eric could get inside this house. Even if he could, would he? They had failed him, and Eric was uncompromising with failure.

She let her head droop onto the ground, ignoring it as the posture shoved silver deeper into her skin. She felt dreadful; weak and miserable with a side order of helpless. What good was being a vampire if you could just get wrapped in silver and raped anyway?


	16. Boom

**16. Boom**

"The house is coated in silver, I can't get in," Eric informed Roderick Epping, the leader of the Blackwater forces they had hired for this job.

"Your vampires have been taken. We have captured some of his men, but we don't know where the women are. We're ready with the cannons, but..." he shrugged, making it clear he was uncertain if Eric wanted him to fire or not with the two women still inside. "The American humans have been moved to another location. They will not tell us where."

By 'cannons', Eric knew he didn't mean cannons at all, but light artillery hand-held rocket launchers. He had every single intention of blowing the house if he couldn't root Alphonsio out. The ring operating out of his bar would end here, one way or another. He'd buy Alexis a new house—she'd probably prefer one in the US anyway.

He stood assessing the situation. He couldn't let the cannons loose with his women in there. But he also couldn't get in, and of them all, he was the best equipped to do so.

"Take me to your captives," he told Epping finally.

"This way," Epping gestured.

Eric gripped the nearest one by the hair, twisting his neck backwards. Subsuming the man's will with his own, he demanded, "¿Dónde están mis mujeres?", or in English, "Where are my women?"

The man soon admitted that they were currently being held on the second floor in the room right over the balcony. The walls were covered in silver-laced wallpaper and the doors had silver handles and silver encircled the windows. Eric had been expected for almost two years.

Infuriated, Eric drank him dry, then dropped him.

"I'm going in there," he told Epping.

"How?" the other man asked, his tone curious rather than disbelieving.

Eric smiled at him, blood still on his face and his fangs out. He had to give the man credit, he didn't flinch, though he did blanch. "You see that crane? One of your men is going to swing it into the house right through the wall while I hold onto it."

He climbed it easily, shimmying up to the top without hesitation. He lodged himself into it and gave the men below a thumbs up sign. The machine lumbered forward with a lurch, and he laid back, covered in black leather from neck to toes. He could only hope it would be enough to protect him from the silver.

Gunfire sounded again, and one of the men escorting the crane fell. Eric held tightly to the crane as it moved forward. Then it began to swing and pick up speed. He wasn't ready for it to slam into the building, despite the fact that he expected it. It shuddered and metal screamed in protest. The wood of the building groaned in response as it was pillaged by the relentless crane.

Gunfire blazed again, and Eric jumped down into the room the women were supposed to be in. At first, he thought it was empty, then he realized that there was a body lying limp and whimpering. He rushed over and jerked the silver-lined hood off. It was Pam, he recognized only her hair and her bloodshot eyes.

"Eric!" she cried. "I want to kill those fuckers so bad."

He dug silver off of her, protected somewhat by the leather he was wearing. A few minutes later, she was free, lacerations on her body and her face smoking and unrecognizable. It was, however, nothing that either a day in the ground or a feeding wouldn't fix.

"They were going to rape us, when Carlos showed up. He took Alexis. I don't know where they went."

"Let's go," he told her. "You can eat on the way."

He led the way through the house using the leather gloves to get beyond the silver doorknobs. After three corpses had struck the floor, Pam was mostly restored.

"I hate this guy," Pam told him. "I am going to tear him apart before I eat him."

They heard screams then. Eric raised an eyebrow and Pam shrugged, licking some blood off of one of her fingers before checking to be sure none was still left on the pink polish. "She was in silver last I saw her."

They headed back down the hallway and off to the lower floors. Halfway down the lower hallway, the sounds ceased. Finally, Eric reached the door it had been coming from and opened it slowly, trying to see what was happening inside. He saw two mangled corpses and then heard grunting.

Pushing the door all the way, he blinked in stunned surprise as he saw a bloody, half naked Alexis squatting over Carlos. His hands were tied behind his back and he was obviously dying.

Alexis was pulling his skin off, then looking at the exposed muscle and blood beneath.

"Alexis," Eric said, surprised to find himself slightly sickened.

"Oh great, she's drunk," Pam said. "Who would have thought she'd go from barely eating to pigging out on multiple humans in one night."

Alexis poked the exposed spine of the man beneath her. "Pretty!" she crowed. She sniffed. "Smells good, too." Then, her face falling into a pathetic realization that she was being selfish, she held the bit of skin up and offered it to them. "Do you want some?"

"You're not supposed to eat him, Alexis. Just drink," Pam told her. "Otherwise you get high."

"I wasn't thirsty anymore," Alexis stated as if that explained everything. She reached for some more and Pam yanked it out of her hand. "Hey!" she objected, reaching for it again.

Pam grabbed Carlos's head and jerked it up, finishing him off with a quick bite and suck to the neck.

"Give that back," Alexis demanded. "I was eating!"

Pam tossed it and stopped her from going after it. "No eating, only drinking!" she admonished, wagging her finger in Alexis's face.

Eric sighed. "No impulse control," he said. "Though I never imagined she'd be an eater."

Pam shrugged. "Probably isn't. She just ate too much and got drunk."

"Do you really think she killed all of these people?" Eric demanded.

"She's not silvered anymore. She might have." She patted Alexis on her bloody cheek. "How did you get out of the silver, Alexis?"

Alexis's confused, bemused eyes met Pams. She reached up and touched her on the lips. "I can see you talking," she said with a delighted grin. "Do it again!"

Pam sighed. "You try. I'm over it."

"Alexis, how did you kill these men?" Eric asked her.

She looked around. "Oh, did I kill them all? I didn't mean to. Are you hungry? We can find more. I can hear some coming."

Eric felt a chill as he realized it was true. There were the heavy footsteps of men coming down the hallway. And they were below ground with a drunk newborn and only silver above them. Whether this had been a trap or not was irrelevant—they were trapped regardless. Alexis could not burrow out and neither Eric nor Pam would leave her.

But before he could stop her, Alexis was out the door and flitting down the hallway. He raced after her, but it was too late. She was in the midst of the oncoming group of men and had her teeth sank into one before he reached her.

She dropped him and reached for another. Eric was furious that he'd had no chance whatsoever to assess the situation. Finally, hoping against all hope that she would still obey him as she reached for another man, he barked. "Alexis, stop! No more!"

She blinked at him and dropped the man while Eric snapped to the next one and broke his neck. "Do it like this," he commanded her.

She did, to his relief, as Pam also came up behind them and began snapping necks. She ate the last one and the final bits of burn on her face disappeared.

"Eat now?" Alexis asked, reaching for one of the corpses. Eric was surprised to find he could still feel nausea after all these years.

"No. No more. You will die if you eat too much. You will be sick from the flesh you have eaten already."

"But it's so sweet," she said. "So yummy. One more bite?"

"It was easy to forget she's only a few days old," Pam admitted.

"You could have gotten her killed by not warning her against eating too much!" he snapped at her.

"She's your slut, you train her!" Pam barked back.

"Can I fight, too?" Alexis asked, childlike and fascinated.

"No!" they both told her at the same time.

"Well, jeez. Fine."

She walked over to the wall and touched a flower in the wallpaper. "Ouch!" she yelped. A few seconds later, as Eric was staring Pam down, she touched it again. "Oh!"

Eric and Pam turned to look at her. She touched the wallpaper, then yelped with pain. So she went to another flower and did the same thing again. Again and again, she tested each flower in turn to see if it would hurt.

Pam looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He sighed. "Bring her along, they've got the cannons ready."

"You bring her," Pam answered.

He hissed at her. "Do what you are told. I am wearing leather and can open the doors."

She sighed. "Fine."

"Keep her with you, Pam."

"I will," she objected. "Come along now," she said to Alexis.

"Pretty," Alexis said again. She followed obediently, though.

They moved toward the front of the house, but found the door blocked from the outside. Eric led them up the stairs towards the second floor. They would crawl down the arm of the crane and out. Then he would tell them to destroy the house.

He opened the door and walked into the room, only to stop and stare at Alphonsio.

"You people are like herding cats," he snarled. "Don't try anything. This is an automatic weapon loaded with wooden bullets. I know you can't outrun them."

"That's my father," Alexis told Pam. "I'm going to kill him."

The gun switched to focus on Alexis.

"You fucking little whore. You have been more trouble than you were ever worth."

"I'm worth eighteen point eight million, and this house was only worth five hundred thousand American dollars. Which is actually pretty cheap, and certainly nothing near my net worth-"

"Alexis!" Eric snapped.

"What?" she objected. "Mormor was rich. It's not mine-"

"Shut. Up!"

She straightened up, crossing her arms and looking vaguely offended. She crossed her arms and looked straight forward.

"What do you want, then?" he asked Alphonsio.

"I simply wanted a grandson to raise as my own," he growled. "I'm sure you have no understanding at all of wanting a son to follow in your footsteps and ensure your legacy-"

"You'd be surprised," Eric told him.

"-but I want my family to continue. I have built nothing short of an empire here, and-"

"An empire of drugs and prostitution isn't exactly Rome," Pam interrupted him.

"But it's mine," he said. "In a few years, it will be even bigger. A grandson was all I wanted since I had no sons. A child of my line to pass it all on to."

He hefted the gun, his goons spreading out. "But you've stolen that from me. The three of you. And now you're going to pay and I'm going to find another way. But first, you're going to get me past the guys you've got outside."

"Why would I do that? You're going to kill us either way," Eric said, crossing his arms.

"Ouch." Alexis was poking the wallpaper again.

"Not true. I will let you and that one-" he pointed at Pam, "-live. You will agree not to return to any of my lands and everything will be fine. I won't use your bar anymore. This is a family affair, you can just walk away."

"Ow," Alexis said from behind him.

He was about to tell her to stop it when Alphonsio said, "What the hell is the matter with her?"

Eric grinned. "She's drunk off of your men's blood. Including Carlos."

"Oof."

"Alexis," Pam said. "No eating!"

He turned to see Alexis with her fangs out, staring at a man's neck.

"It sounds like heaven," Alexis said, reaching toward him with a finger. He scuttled away.

"Hmmm," she said, a sound between desire and a growl. The man's retreat was inflaming her vampire lusts and Eric knew that the situation was becoming critical.

If she gave in and ate, she would go wild and retain nothing of sanity. It was the worst possible time for him to be under a gun. She turned and caught his eye. She stopped and stared at him, a slow, sexy smile spreading across her face. He knew what she was thinking—or at least the general concept of it.

"She really is high, isn't she?" Alphonsio asked. "Crazy as a loon to begin with, now she's even worse."

Eric saw the gun waver, turning back to Alexis. If he didn't do something soon, he knew she would lose all self-control and start eating every human in sight. He flitted at Alphonsio and saw fire blaze from the end of the gun as he tried to turn it toward Eric and away from Alexis. He felt silver tear into him and gripped Alphonsio with all of his strength, throwing him against the wall and literally through it.

Gunfire erupted in the room and Eric realized immediately that all of these bullets were silver. Yet the hail of bullets didn't last long—a silver bullet could kill a human even more quickly than a vampire.

He pushed Alexis ahead of him and down the arm of the crane, dragging Pam as well. All three of them were badly injured, though, and he wasn't sure they were going to make it. He got to the bottom and staggered away from the crane, Pam and Alexis beside him. As they started toward the woods, he saw Pam stumble. Helping her, he lifted the radio on his shoulder.

"Blow it," he told Epping.

"But-"

"Do it now!" he snarled. The man dared disobey him?

"But your-"

"Now!"

"Yes, Sir," the man replied.

Eric held Pam against him as she groaned with pain. "Fucking humans," Pam grunted.

Eric turned to Alexis and felt something go first numb and then agonized inside him.

He turned back and saw her walking toward the house where Alphonsio lay on the ground, broken and battered, but still alive.

He screamed, "Alexis, run!" to the whistling whine of artillery shells screaming towards the house.

Fire the color of blood blossomed and he saw her silhouetted against it for a frozen instant and then Pam was jerking him to the ground.


	17. Pretty

**17. Pretty**

Alexis bolted for the only place she knew was reasonably safe. She felt pain, but it was distant and strange, as if it didn't belong to her. The world felt strange and everything was upside down. She stopped for a second to watch the house burn. It was so pretty!

But that imperative exerted itself on her foggy mind again. "Run, Alexis!" So she turned and ran again, laughing as she dodged trees and leaped fallen logs. It was thrilling, exciting, and slightly terrifying.

When she got to the mineshaft, she dropped into it, then her befuddled mind found it confusing that she couldn't run anymore. So she did the next best thing. She burrowed. The worry and fear in Eric's voice surely meant she was in some sort of danger. What was a vampire to do when she was in danger and she felt like she'd been burned on every inch of her body—which she had been.

She crawled into the ground and let it envelop her. It felt comforting and cozy as if it were the sweetest thing in the world. She lay quiescent and still, the sensation of pain flowing together with the strange sensations of the Earth.

She felt an earthworm move around her, and almost smiled. It seemed to sense her like a stone, and ignored her, burrowing alongside her skin and she found it sweet and dear. She still tasted blood on her tongue and it was intoxicating.

A strange tugging sensation came over her, but she knew that Eric would know to find her where she was, so she lay still and quiet, waiting to hear him land above her. She had no idea how much time had passed when she climbed from her impromptu grave.

But she did know that she was starving and it was night and time to feed. She felt there was something she was supposed to be doing. She climbed out and stood stock still with uncertainty. What was she doing?

It dawned on her slowly. She was hungry. That must have been the important thing. She climbed easily up the walls of the mineshaft and stood staring at the moon for a moment. It was pretty. She smelled food. Tasty, delicious food. Creatures were milling around with machines and equipment, trying to fix a house.

She remembered that they were called 'men' but what really mattered was that they were food. She grabbed the first one and flitted into the woods with him. She knew full well that the others could be dangerous. She remembered burns and fire and pain.

But they were food, and she was so hungry. So very, very hungry.

She dropped the first one and grabbed another. He was so hot, so alive, and so deliciously terrified. He smelled sweet and succulent and tasted even better. She dropped him on top of the first one, smearing blood across her face with her forearm.

So hungry. She squatted down and watched again. She waited until one came looking for the other two, and drank until he was limp. She sucked until nothing more came, and then growled. She had to have more.

For three nights, she went back to the same place, until she saw someone familiar. She didn't know why he was familiar, but he was. He sat on a device with wheels that she thought she should recognize, too. She shrugged, uncaring.

It would not help him escape. She tracked him and followed his every move for four hours, until they left him alone. Just for a minute.

A few seconds were all she needed. She grabbed him and found him stuck to the contraption. So she just pushed it as the other men did.

"Alexis, please!" the thing said, begging.

She liked that.

She smiled at him, giggling slightly. "I'm going to eat you," she told him. "I'm so hungry."

"Please, don't. I'll give you anything you want."

The air was filled with the fragrance of terror. She ripped him loose from the contraption with some effort. He smelled so good. Delicious. Like roses. Or something. She couldn't quite remember.

Throwing him over her shoulder, she dodged trees and jumped over logs and leaped down into her home. It was familiar. Someone had been there once. Someone important. But that wasn't important now. Her home would smell like this broken man. She shook him and he made pleasing noises so she shook him again.

Gleeful, she danced with him, giggling with all the blood she had drunk that night.

Then she felt the strange tugging sensation. Someone was calling her. Someone important. Someone... someone pink. She frowned. The pretty pink one, she almost remembered.

But the scent overpowered the tugging and the memory and she sniffed him. He was talking. She should understand what he was saying, but it was something boring about money and power. She poked him and he made more pleasant screaming noises.

She burrowed into the ground when morning came. He yelled for a long time, but she ignored him.

The next night he smelled bad under the fear and she was irritated with him. She dragged him to the top and threw him in the stream that ran nearby. It took her a moment to realize he was dying so she grabbed him by the hair and held him up.

He kept calling her by name and pleading with her to have pity on him because he was her father. She dragged him back down. She left him there and climbed out to eat. She found her usual hunting spot abandoned so she went somewhere else and ate four of the man-creatures.

When she was done drinking, she took a bite out of one of them. "Drink only," a remembered voice said in her head and she spat and grumbled, but obeyed. She always obeyed that voice, even though it wasn't real and it was only in her head.

She thought there must be something wrong with hearing it, but she stood sniffing the breeze and felt that strange, urgent call again. Pink and cold. But nice. It was pink, and it was cold, and it was somehow familiar. It went with the voice, except the pink didn't talk.

Slinking home, she crept down into the mine shaft. The man was sleeping and he didn't smell good. She knelt beside him and yelled, "Boo!"

He woke making pleasing noises and she laughed with delight. She patted him on the face and sniffed him as he exuded terror again.

"Pretty!" she cackled, patting him. She picked him up and danced with him, laughing as he flopped around her body.

"I'm starving!" he told her.

She understood that word. She would bring him something to eat. She climbed out and searched. Finally, she found some small, bushy, sleeping creature and brought it to him. She ripped it apart and handed pieces to him while it made noises that should have been pleasing, but weren't. He refused them all, and she shrugged.

She burrowed into the ground and slept.

A week later, he wouldn't respond to her and he didn't smell sweet anymore, even after she washed him in the stream. So she dragged him out and ripped him apart, putting him back where he came from. It was disappointing, but she didn't mind too much.

One toy was as good as another. If she wanted to, she'd just find something else to play with.

But she didn't. She had grown bored with him and it had been a lot of work, trying to get him to eat and dunking him in the water every night. Plus her mine still stunk of his body fluids. Disgusting.

Eventually, she figured out that she could cover it up and it didn't stink anymore.

The tugging sensation came again, and she almost decided to follow it, but she wasn't sure how. It came again the next night and she flitted towards it, stopping here and there to eat. She ate more while she was on the move, with new and exciting places and even more terrified man-creatures.

She burrowed at dawn and crawled out in the night. Now that she was following the strange tugging sensation, it seemed to grow more and more insistent.

It was early when she finally reached the source of the calling. It was a man-building. Strange sounds came out of it, and it smelled of peculiar odors and the stink of the man-creatures.

But it smelled of the Pink, too.

She crept towards it. Then the tugging became urgent and she flitted inside, past the startled, slow-witted like-me creature at the door. She saw the strange flat things and squatted on one of them, looking for the Pink like-me creature.

"Oh shit, what the fuck?" one of the man-creatures cried as she knocked over the foul-smelling liquid onto him.

She hissed at him, and jumped, knocking him to the floor. The sweet smell rose from him and she laughed.

Then the like-me creature beside him grabbed her and she spun, snarling. "Mine," she grunted. "Food."

"Leave him alone," the like-me creature said. "You're young, I don't want to hurt you."

She had fed already that night, several times. She was not afraid, though she was still hungry—as she was always hungry, no matter how often she ate.

She lunged at the like-me creature and his eyes widened in surprise. She overpowered him easily, growling and pushing him down, her hands around his throat.

"Alexis, stop!"

It was The Voice. She let go instantly, jumping off of the like-me creature. She turned to look at The Voice. He stood in the doorway into the back of the stinking man-building. Still squatting, she scuttled to the man-thing. "My food," she said, snarling.

"No. Leave him be," The Voice said.

The door slammed open and Alexis turned, angry to be denied her meal. She hissed, then realized it was the Pink.

She scuttled slightly forward. "Pink," she said. She smelled her. She smelled Pink.

"Were you calling her?" The Voice asked.

Alexis looked at him. He was... familiar. He was always with the Pink.

Alexis sensed the discomfort of the Pink one and snarled at the other one.

"Yes. I know you thought she was dead, but I-"

"You were right," The Voice said. "But she's wild."

"I will retrain her," the Pink one said.

The Voice flashed across the room and Alexis calculated at speeds too great for any human mind. She stepped between him and the Pink one, recognizing the attack for what it was.

She had fed multiple times, and the Pink one was Important.

He ran into her and she felt bone-crushing agony. She hissed, writhing in pain. He stepped over her and she grabbed him, groaning as misery screamed through her from the motion of broken bones.

To her surprise, he knelt beside her. "You will meet the True Death, and you will be free."

"No hurt the Pink," she told him, fangs snapping out. She didn't care about death.

He looked up at the Pink one. "No wild vampire has ever been salvaged."

"She stopped when you told her to. She remembers."

"Remembers what? Pink? It's a color."

"It's something."

He grunted. "It would be far less cruel to simply kill her now," he said. "No one should have to live like this."

Alexis touched his lips. "Run, Alexis," she said. "Run home, but no Pink. Waiting and waiting and waiting, but no Pink." She watched her finger and realized it was dirty. "Run, Alexis."

He picked her up and she fought him. He handed her to the Pink and she subsided. She would protect. The tugging was gone, but she would protect anyway.

She was taken into a box and it closed over her. She screamed and fought but it hurt and she finally gave up. She woke up ravenous but couldn't get out.

After what seemed like forever, the box opened. She jumped out and squatted on the floor, glaring.

"Alexis doesn't like box," she snapped at the Pink one.

"Yeah, yeah. Come on."

She snarled and hissed and was dragged up the stairs and out a back door. She was shoved into another box, this one moved and was one of the man-machine-things.

She looked around it, touching the strange variation of textures.

"Eric thinks you're a lost cause," the Pink one said.

"Run, Alexis," she answered. That was what the Voice always said.

"Ugh. Maybe he's right."

She was dragged up more stairs and then the Pink one started taking her clothes away. She objected and tried to get them back.

The pink one shoved her into another box and got in with her. She was naked, too.

Rain poured down on her and Alexis shrieked. She didn't like the rain.

"It's just a shower," the Pink one said.

"No shower, Pink!" Alexis objected. "Rain! No rain!"

"Pam. My name is Pam."

"Pink," Alexis corrected her.

The Pink one slapped her hard and Alexis struck the wall.

"Pam," the Pink one said again.

"Okay," Alexis said, petulant and unhappy.

"What's my name?"

"Pin—Pam!" Alexis corrected when she raised her hand again. She raised both hands to ward off the potential blow and cowered. She did not want the Pam to be angry with her.

"Turn around," the Pam told her. She turned.

Her hair was pulled out of the matted, snarled braid and she was turned again.

"God, you are so fucking gorgeous. I have no idea how you hid yourself for so long." The Pam pressed her lips against Alexis's, and Alexis thought to pull away. But the Pam liked it, so it was okay. The other woman sighed. "It really does nothing for you, does it? You're just not into women."

"Woman-thing good to eat. Man thing best. Smell nice."

"Yeah, whatever. I wasn't talking about eating anyway."

"Man-food good. The Pam eats woman-food?"

"Just Pam."

"Just Pam eats woman-food?"

"Just call me Pam."

"Okay."

"There is no way in hell I can do this. You're worse than a child and I hate children. And all I want to do is fuck you." She stepped out of the water-box. "Come on."

Alexis was dried and then given new clothes. Pam had to help her put them on.

"Oh, you look hot. I would eat you up."

"You eat the like-me ones?"

"What are you babbling about?"

Alexis stared at her. She hadn't seemed that stupid a few minutes ago. "Like-me," she said, and pointed at the Pam. "Not like them. Not-food like-me."

"Vampire, Alexis. You're a vampire. We're vampires."

"The Voice is a vampire. The Eric."

"Just Eric."

"Just Eric is a vampire. Not-food. The Eric was going to hurt Pin—Pam."

"You're giving me a headache," Pam told her. "Just don't speak."

"Okay," Alexis said. She said nothing more as Pam took her down to the moving machine-box and they went back to the smelly place.

They went into a smaller room and she looked at all of the things on the wall and the small square thing.

"Don't touch that," Pam told her. A few minutes later, "Leave that be." A second or so after that, "God damn it, stop touching everything! What the fuck?"

"Pretty," Alexis explained.

The door opened. "Finally!" Pam said. She sounded happy, and unhappy.

Alexis looked at the man who had walked into the room. Another man walked in behind him, shorter and with dark hair.

"Like-me!" Alexis announced. Pam gave her an angry stare. "Vampire," she amended.

"Eric," Alexis said, walking up to him and reaching up to touch his lips.

He grabbed her hand and hissed at her, his fangs snapping out. So she used her other hand. He grabbed that one, too. "Stop that."

"I've never seen a wild vampire before," the other vampire said.

The Voice dropped her hands, "Alexis, do you remember Bill? He is your King."

She reached out to touch his lips, too. Eric grabbed her hand again. "No. That's not polite."

"Pretty," she said, as it seemed something was expected of her.

"That's pretty much all she says unless you ask her something. That or 'Run, Alexis'. If you ask her questions, she just spews gibberish that usually ends with 'pretty' or 'run, Alexis'." Pam was unhappy with her.

"Pink," Alexis said, pointing at Pam's dress.

"Do you really think she can be saved? If she speaks nonsense, and-"

"She's my Progeny. Would you put your Progeny down if you found her wandering around confused?"

The King stood staring at her. "Maybe Sookie can help."

Alexis remembered what a Sookie was. "Ponytail!" she announced, feeling herself very clever.

He exchanged a dubious look with the Voice and turned around.

She looked at Pam. Surely she would understand. "Sookie. Ponytail."

"Shut up, Alexis."

Inexplicably saddened, Alexis sat down on the sofa.

Two hours later, a blond food-woman walked in, smelling even sweeter than the man-pet had smelled. Alexis walked toward her, her fangs snapping out. The Voice grabbed her before she made it.

"Woman-food."

Eric's face drew close to hers, and for a moment, something unfamiliar stirred in her. Her fangs snapped back in and she stared at him. Familiar. Important. She reached for his lips again and he stopped her.

"Ponytail," he told her.

She turned and looked at the food-woman again. "Sookie!" she announced. Her fangs snapped back out. "Hungry."

"I can't hear her thoughts," Sookie said. "I don't think I can be any use to you. But I think she recognizes you, Eric. Did you see the look on her face? Like a little lost puppy for a few seconds before you stopped her from touching you."

Alexis clicked her fangs away. Probably not food.

"Hungry," she informed Pam, then turned back to looking at the walls.

"Don't touch that." This time it was Eric.

"Take her back to her grandmother's house," Sookie said, then left with Bill a few minutes later.

"Will you stop it?" Eric said, stopping her from touching a flat, two-dimensional image of him.

"Pretty," she told him.

"It's a picture of me," he said, scowling at her.

"Pretty."

"I think he's offended that you're calling him pretty," Pam told her. "Try sexy."

"Pretty pink, sexy Voice," Alexis offered.

"I've changed my mind," Pam said. "Give her the True Death. I don't think I can stand to hear 'pretty' or 'pink' again. Ever."

"Why does she keep saying it?"

"I don't know. Ask her."

Eric gripped her upper arm and turned her away from the wall. "Why do you keep saying 'pink'?"

Alexis pointed at Pam. "Pam pink. Went to find pink Pam and waited. No pink. So hungry. Waiting and waiting and so hungry."

"Why were you waiting for Pam?"

"Run, Alexis!"

He looked at her strangely. She reached up and this time he let her touch his lips. "Pretty."

"Do you think she remembers me telling her to run from the fire?" he asked Pam over her head, swatting her hand away so he could talk.

"I doubt it. She's about as wild as they come."

"What if she was at the mine? What if she burrowed?"

"She couldn't burrow, she was drunk."

"Eric. Mormor." Alexis said. Then, because she liked the sound of the word, she began to dance around the small room. "Mor-mor. Mor-mor. Mor-mor."

"Do you remember Mormor?" Eric asked her, stopping her again.

"Dance, Alexis, dance. Mormor," Alexis said with perfect confidence. She danced around the room again.

"Take her to her house, maybe Sookie's right."

"I'll stop by my place and pick up some things and stay with her," Eric said. "I don't think she can be left alone. Do you think you can take care of the bar?"

"Of course. Better the bar than her. I think I'll 'accidentally' skewer her."

"She is your Progeny, Pam."

"She's fucking annoying."

Alexis found herself in a new moving box and touched buttons, making a piece of glass go up and down.

"Okay, okay, that's enough."

"Pretty," she smiled at him.

He looked away. They arrived at another man-building and got into another moving box. When they went inside another room, she stood and looked around.

Then she stopped and stared. She knew that object. Chair.

She walked up and touched the clear glass around it.

"Don't touch that," Eric said.

She smiled. "Prince Ehrik, son of Ulfrick, son of Gorlon. The legend says that someday he will return to reclaim the throne of the King and avenge their deaths. This chair is over a thousand years old and has been in our family for generations." She patted the glass. "Pretty."

Then she started dancing again, ignoring him and humming softly to herself.


	18. Eric Gives In Again

_Thank you for all the favorites and the awesome reviews. You guys are awesome. :)_

* * *

><p><strong>18. Eric Gives in Again<strong>

She had just spoken of him in exactly the tone of voice the old Alexis would have used. The mild, soft voice speaking his name and his father's name had brought up powerful emotions in him.

But he also realized that there was something he hadn't known about her even when she was human. She danced around the room, humming to herself. It wasn't just any dance, either. Her body was lean and muscular because she was a ballet dancer.

He stopped her, and she reached for his lips again. Irritated, he held her hands away. "Why didn't you dance, Alexis?" he asked her.

"Dance, Alexis, dance. Mormor. Can't let Carlos see! Don't let them stare. Always with the staring. Dance, Alexis."

She moved away from him, humming softly and dancing to her own music.

She was a wild thing, lost in the blood lust. She was broken and could not be recovered, according to the common knowledge of vampires.

Yet there she was. Dancing. Dancing and caressing the glass over his father's chair as if it were precious and 'pretty'. She remembered, though not consciously. Could the memories be revived?

Strangely enough, it was the pragmatic Pam who seemed to be the only one who thought she could be salvaged.

Eric was afraid she could be. What would she think of him then? He had checked the mine shaft, but never thought to burrow for her. She had been so drunk with blood and flesh that he was surprised she had survived at all.

"Fire in the hole!" she yelled at him suddenly, then chortled and skipped away. In a singsong voice, she said, "Run, Alexis. Run, Alexis."

"Who told you to run, Alexis?" he had to know. He jammed his hands into his pants pockets and stared at her.

"The Voice. Eric. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole." She said it with three different voices, and he realized she was mimicking the soldiers who had fired the 'cannons'.

She did remember. But did it matter? She couldn't be considered sane by any definition of it.

"Hungry," she said. "Alexis hungry. Want man-food."

"Shit," he swore. How was he going to procure food for her and keep her from draining them?

"Come with me," he told her.

They got in the car and she played with buttons again. Gasping as if it were the most magical thing in the world when the window went up and down. He sighed, but couldn't resist the grin that worked its way across his face. He had to admit that, as utterly nutty as it was, she was cute.

"Eric. Happy." She reached for his mouth.

"Stop that!"

At least she wasn't saying, "But I," all the time anymore. In fact, so far she had shown no sign of defiance beyond the original misguided attempt to protect Pam.

He had called Pam to the bar the instant he saw Alexis. He hadn't expected to be able to control her himself. A wild vampire was an unthinking, brutal, murderous animal.

And he had no doubt that she was such a creature. He had seen her devouring flesh, a practice that resulted in madness even for vampires if indulged in. He wondered how much she had eaten since then.

"Do you eat flesh?" he asked her.

"Just drink," she answered. "Voice says just drink. Tasty good meat, smells nice. Looks pretty. Just drink. The Voice said it."

"How long did you wait to eat again?" he asked her.

"Yesterday. Hungry now. Very hungry."

He tried again. "How long did you wait to eat after the fire in the hole?"

"Long. Nine dawns. Dying. Waiting for pink. Waiting for the Voice. Darkness. Worms. Nine dawns."

She sounded sad and confused. He couldn't believe it. She wasn't kidding when she said she was dying. For a newborn, nine days with nothing, even in the ground, should have been a death sentence.

"Funny man, funny man. Dance with the funny man." She was cheerful and chipper again.

He pulled up in front of Fangtasia. "Stay here, unless dawn comes," he told her. He was beginning to realize that she would take anything he said completely literally in her current state of mind. He didn't want something to happen and her to stay in the car and die.

He went inside and found a fangbanger. He took him into his office and went to bring Alexis inside. "Food!" she exclaimed upon seeing the young man sitting on the sofa.

"You must eat properly, Alexis. No killing."

She looked mutinous but said nothing. She rushed over to him, her fangs snapping out.

"Alexis!" he stopped her. "Glamour him first."

"Smells good," she said. "Fear."

"No, Alexis. You must learn to control it. Glamour him."

She turned and looked at the human.

"Tell him to relax."

He saw the instant her will locked over his.

"Relax, food-man," she said.

He almost slapped his hand over his face and walked out. In part because as serious as the situation was and as deadly as it was for this human, it was almost irresistibly amusing.

She snapped her fangs into his neck. Eric listened for the sound of his heartbeat to slow. When it came, he said, "Stop!"

She growled. "Stop!" he commanded again and she jerked away. "Lick them closed," he barked. She did.

Then he glamoured the human, "Go back into the bar and enjoy your evening. Do not allow another vampire to feed from you tonight."

The man got up and left.

Eric turned to look at Alexis. He expected her to be unhappy about the feeding situation, but found her looking at him with that same lost, confused look she'd had for just a few seconds earlier. She reached for his lips and he almost stopped her.

Her cool fingers touched him. She whispered, "No more kisses, Alexis. No more kisses." She jumped up and started humming again. He walked out into the bar and crooked a finger at Pam.

Inside the office, he said, "Watch her for a minute."

Pam gave him an irritated, skeptical look.

He sighed. "She's changed. Just watch her."

Pam said, "Not very much, really. She still only says about four words and has no mind." Pam had always felt that Alexis's obedience would extend beyond him and herself, making her easily manipulated by other vampires. Eric'd had his doubts, and still did.

He scowled at her and she shrugged, turning to watch Alexis.

"Is she doing ballet?"

"It's why she's so sleek, I think," Eric told her. "She said, 'don't let Carlos see' and 'always with the staring'. I think her social phobia kept her from doing it professionally. Or publicly at all."

"How sad. Really. What's your point?"

"She remembers. Her mormor kept telling her to give up her job and take up dance. She remembers that."

"Doesn't matter. She's still got more screws loose than an overturned toolbox, and Bill's going to make you put her down if you can't knock more of them than ballet back into place." She watched Alexis pirouette. "Makes you want to fuck her even more."

"She's loyal to you. She would probably do it," Eric said, brooding as he watched her.

Pam shrugged. "She's as interested in me as a lump of clay. I'd be good if she was petrified, or if she was into me. Not somewhere in between."

Eric looked at her. "Are you seriously telling me that knowing she's doing it just to please you doesn't appeal to you at all?"

"Not really. But you knock yourself out."

Eric felt a strange sensation run down his back. The vast majority of Makers spent hundreds of years in sexual congress with their Progeny. It was why they were chosen—compatibility on every level. Eventually, they bored of each other, and the Progeny would become a Maker.

Pam had not chosen on that basis. She liked her humans, he knew. Though she would happily indulge with anyone who struck her fancy and really had relatively few standards beyond the person being attractive and willing and not too stupid. Pam did not do attachments, except for him.

In her own way, like Alexis, she was loyal and unflinching in her devotion to him. It allowed him to be himself around her.

And suddenly, he didn't want to be around Alexis anymore. It unnerved him in much the same way that it had unnerved him to lose access to her emotional state. She was simple now. Her reactions to him lacking in any transparency or artifice. And she reacted to everyone around her the same way, including him.

If she remembered him, it was intermittent between the bouts of insanity and the strange sweetness she exhibited.

"Hey, can I borrow Jessica for a couple days?" he asked Bill when he picked up the phone.

At Bill's statement that he would have to take it up with Jessica, he called her and asked her to stay with Alexis. He was surprised to hear the eagerness in her voice. When he gave her instructions on how to get to Alexis's house, she sounded almost excited as she hung up the phone.

He shrugged and wrangled the excitable, curious Alexis into the car... wrangling her away from another vampire who kissed her because she tried to grab his face.

"Stop doing that! It's rude!" he told her.

"Kisses," she told him, an unusual, sly grin on her face. He grabbed her hand as she reached for him again and squeezed them, irritated with her unvarnished delight in the other man's attempt to kiss her.

"Ow!" she protested. He let go, stuffing his hands in his pockets. She reached for him again then cocked her head. "'Stop doing that!'," she said, in a surprisingly accurate mimicry of his voice. She sighed. "No more kisses for Alexis."

She went back to humming and skipped toward his car.

He watched her go, her hair swinging behind her in a cascading wave. If she only had a mind, he would fuck her senseless.

Getting in the car beside her, he drove her in silence to her house. When they pulled up into the drive, she looked at the ancient manor, leaning forward and craning her neck. "Pretty!" she said.

He got out and found Jessica waiting for him already. "Is that her? Is she really crazy?"

"She's not a freak show, Jessica."

"I know, I was just glad to get out of the house. Staying with Bill and Sookie is stifling."

"Hair. Pretty." Alexis grabbed Jessica's hair and sniffed it. "Smells nice. Jasmine." She let go and started toward the house.

Eric grabbed her arm. "Alexis, this is Jessica. She's going to be staying with you for a few nights."

"Jessica," Alexis said, reaching for her mouth.

He growled. "Stop doing it to other people, too!"

"Jeez, okay." She skipped off toward the house.

Jessica looked at him curiously. He shrugged. "She's a few slices shy of a loaf."

"I think she's just the empty bag with some crumbs," Jessica told him.

He sighed.

"But she's sweet." She grinned cheekily at him.

"Vampires are not supposed to be 'sweet', Jessica."

She shrugged. "Bill still hasn't given me the rulebook, so I like her."

He left, giving her Alexis's remote to the house alarm and admonishing her to leave it on at all times.

He called the next night. "How's it going?"

"Fine. Did you know she has a theatre in here and like a billion movies? She's got more movies than blockbuster-"

"Are you watching her? She has even less impulse control than you do."

"Yeah. She spends most of her time in the 'workout room' and the rest of her time going back and forth from there to the kitchen."

"The kitchen? What's she doing in the kitchen?"

"Making love to the refrigerator," she said with a laugh. "'Pretty... pretty... pretty...' she says all night long. It would be cute if it wasn't a refrigerator. That makes it kind of creepy, but in a cute way."

"I'm coming over tonight."

He didn't bother to drive, he just flitted up. When he got there, he heard the sound of breaking glass inside and felt something cold run up his spine. He went straight in, almost tripping over a human body in the way.

"What the fuck?" he demanded.

The sight that met his eyes was unbelievable. One man lay dead, clearly an intruder, as he still gripped the gun he'd obviously shot Alexis with. But Alexis had another man in her arms and was twirling around with him as he struggled.

"She's crazy," Jessica objected. "She won't let go of him."

The man squirmed away and Alexis let him get a few paces, ignoring the blood that ran down her own face from what had obviously been a gunshot to the head, and which was already almost entirely healed.

He got a few paces before she grabbed him by the hair and dragged him back to the open area of her dining room. Humming again, she twisted him easily back into a dancing position and starting around the room again, twirling and humming.

The scent of abject human terror filled the room. Alexis seemed oblivious to it.

"She likes to make him scream, too. I have no idea how I ever thought she was sweet," she told him.

"What's she saying?"

"'Where's the money, bitch?' over and over again and giggling every time. And sometimes 'pretty' like always."

Eric flitted across the room, "Stop, Alexis. Give him to me."

She sighed and let him go, giggling when Eric chased him down.

Gripping the man's head, he turned him towards him. Locking his will down with his own, Eric demanded, "Have you ever been in this house before?"

"Yes."

"Did you beat her the last time you were here?" he asked.

"Yes."

Furious, Eric ripped the man limb from limb, not bothering to kill him first.

He looked over to find Alexis with her hands on her hips, glaring at him. "You broke my pretty!"

Then she danced around the room, this time obviously pretending she had a partner. Into the kitchen she went, and his eyes met Jessica's. She looked stunned.

"He and his buddy over there beat her almost to death the last time they were here. They obviously came back to complete the job. We only barely managed to save her that time, they beat her so badly. Now you know why we eat them without remorse," he kicked the dead corpse at the doorway.

"I... I can't decide if I'm going to be sick or start dancing around like her," Jessica admitted. "She's so... savage."

"She's a wild vampire. It's easy to forget because she's so..."

"Sweet."

"Yes, I suppose."

He walked over to look into the kitchen. She was leaning on the refrigerator, patting it. "Pretty."

"See? Refrigerator fetish."

"I got her that refrigerator."

"Really? You should try jewelry," Jessica told him.

He scowled at her. "Go home, Jessica."

He would thank her later. Not with a refrigerator.

She left, stepping delicately over the body in the doorway.

"Alexis, come here," he said.

"Run Alexis, run," she singsonged as she walked up to him.

He watched her struggle with her desire to touch his lips for a few seconds before putting her hands behind her back. She looked up at him, her eyes large in her face, haloed by the hair around it.

"Those men attacked you," he told her.

"'Where's the money, bitch?'," she said. "No money at the house. No money at the house to encourage robbers. Money at the bank."

It was a perfect mimicry of her grandmother.

"Do you remember them being here?"

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November. On the fifth of November in sixteen-oh-five, Guy Fawkes was caught in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament with several dozen barrels of gunpowder. Each year thereafter came a speech to remind the people that treason would never be forgotten. It has become-"

He laughed. It shouldn't have been funny, with her standing in her kitchen in sweat pants and the dining room and him covered in blood.

"Remember remember the fifth of November  
>Gunpowder, treason and plot.<br>I see no reason gunpowder, treason  
>Should ever be forgot..." She danced across the kitchen toward the refrigerator.<p>

"Try to focus," he told her. "The robbers, do you remember them being here before?"

"Yes. 'Where's the money, bitch?' 'Where are the jewels?'."

"Do you remember the refrigerator."

She smiled like the sun breaking through the clouds. "Refrigerator. Eric. Pretty." She reached for his mouth again, then stopped halfway.

He pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. Her reaction was immediate and simple. She wrapped her arms around him and her body undulated against his. He ached with longing for her and could no longer resist it.

He groaned, needing to be with her. He ripped at her clothes, shredding them to get them off of her. She gave a long, low grumble that sounded almost like a purr and tried to climb up him. He grinned. Picking her up, he flitted up the stairs as she giggled.

He dropped her on the bed and pulled his own clothes off quickly. He slid onto the bed and she turned to him, a smile on her face. He buried his head in her neck. "I shouldn't be doing this."

"Hmm, kisses."

He nipped at her neck. "You don't know what you're talking about," he told her, but kissed her anyway.

"Then by all means, show me everything," she said in a mimicry of his voice. He drew back and lifted an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Show Eric the chair. Show me everything." She smiled with a look that lit up her face and made her eyes sparkle.

"Did I say that to you?" he asked, his heart stopping.

She mimicked him. "Then by all means, show me everything." She patted him on the chest. "Show Eric the chair. Father's chair. Father in the woods. Different father."

She grew immediately bored, though, and he couldn't get anything more out of her. After a couple of minutes, he didn't care, either. She was touching him with complete abandon, her hands seeking and searching and her mouth on parts of him that made him forget he'd almost gotten something worthwhile out of her fogged mind.


	19. Understanding Eric

**19. Understanding Eric**

She woke up to the sound of banging on the door. Eric was beside her, on the floor. Eric. She smiled and stretched. The banging continued.

She got up and strolled up to the door. She opened it to find the King and a blond like-me... er, vampire... with him.

"King Bill. No crown. King Bill lost his crown, looked all over the whole damned town. Turned the place upside-down, but never, never found his crown."

He exchanged a look with the blond vampire and Alexis considered the possibility that she had made a mistake. She thought hard for a few seconds. "Please come in," she said finally.

"Are you here alone?" the blond asked her.

"Alexis, this is Nan," the King told her.

Alexis reached up to see if she was breathing, but stopped. "Don't do that to other people, either."

"Eric. Sleeping. Bang, bang, bang, bang. It's rude."

Eric arrived in the room then, and she got distracted.

"Nan," he greeted the newcomer with just her name.

"Nan. Vampire." Alexis didn't need to know any more than that. Nan was not food. "Hungry."

"Your little pet killed a fairly prominent Mexican Dignitary. Alphonsio something or other." Nan told him. "If she's wild, she's going to have to meet the True Death."

"She's recovering," Eric argued. He summoned Pam, but knew she might arrive too late.

"Really? Did you know she just made up a limerick about Bill?"

"She did? Was it good?"

Nan looked past him where Alexis was humming and dancing. He was glad he had at least removed the human bodies before joining her in the cellar.

"She doesn't look very sane to me. Even if she were a human, she'd be considered retarded."

"She remembers more every day. She's recovering."

"What is the point? Just make a new one. She's a newborn, isn't she?"

"She is Pam's Progeny. She is recovering. There is no good reason to make her meet the True Death," he argued.

"I will determine if she is recovering or not," Nan told him. "We will not allow an out of control vampire to run rampant in the US. We're trying to-"

Eric hissed at her, and Alexis turned to watch, bristling. This 'Nan' creature was upsetting Eric. Alexis hissed, too.

Nan lifted an eyebrow at her. "Sit down," she said, indicating a chair at the table.

Alexis dismissed her because Eric's fangs were back in and he was happy again. "No." She hummed, looking at pictures of people on the wall. She thought they looked pretty.

"Alexis!" Eric snapped at her. "Sit down."

"Okay," she said, wounded. He didn't have to bark at her.

She sat down and realized that the wood of the table made lovely patterns. She traced them, humming.

"How old are you?" Nan asked.

"Thirty-two. Alexis turned thirty-two. Cake at the office. Sarah ate most of it. Cake. No more cake." She felt sad.

"How long have you been a vampire?" the woman snapped, irritated.

"One hundred sixty four dawns. Oooone hundred, sixtyyyyy-four!" she sang it. "Counting for the Pam."

"What? Never mind. Do you know who your Maker is?" she asked this time.

"Pink Pam. Maker Pam. Wait for Pam in the darkness." She smiled at the memory of the worms. She wondered how she'd felt they were gross when they had felt so soft and curious against her body in the Earth. "Sweet worms. Gentle." She traced the pretty pattern on the table.

"Do you eat flesh?"

"No eating. Just drink. The Voice says so. No eating. Never, never eating. Drink." She saw a look of anger on the other woman's face and saw her shoot a glance of irritation at Eric. She did not like this woman.

Her fangs snapped out and she hissed.

"Stop that," Eric told her.

Nan turned to Bill as Alexis struggled with her urge to fight.

"Bring the human in."

A human was brought in and Alexis sniffed the air. "Pretty," she said. He smelled delicious. "Hungry."

"Eat him," Nan told her. "Kill him and eat him."

Alexis glared at her. "No."

She stood up. "You will do as you are told!"

"No killing!" Alexis yelled at her. "No killing!"

"You're hungry, aren't you?" Nan asked her.

"Alexis hungry. No killing!"

Nan's eyes narrowed. "Eat him."

"No. Nan wants to trick."

"Eat," Eric told her.

She looked at Eric, and considered disobeying. Did he not see that Nan was trying to trick her somehow? But she got up and walked over to the human. She gripped his face and regretted losing the sweet smell of his fear.

"Relax," she told him, gripping his will with hers. He fluttered slightly as if it wasn't working. She ran her hand down his cheek. "Relax. Peaceful. Pretty." He smiled and she drank. He tasted sweet, like something from a long ago time that she couldn't quite remember.

His heart slowed and she felt excitement run through her. It was the sweetest moment, that instant of death. "No killing," The Voice said inside her mind.

With a monumental effort of will, she stopped. She licked him, cleaning his blood off of him. She pulled away and looked at him. "Relax," she said with a smile, patting him.

Her fangs snapped back in and she patted him again. Then she got up and turned to walk back to the table to sit down. As she passed Nan, she napped her fangs out and said, "No killing."

She saw Nan give Eric an enraged look. It made her feel smug.

"No killing, no eating. Drink only. Stop. Relax." She lifted an eyebrow and smirked at Nan. Somehow, though she didn't know how, she knew she had just outsmarted the other woman.

Pam zipped in the door.

Nan turned to her. "Can you control your Progeny, or only Eric?"

"She obeys me," Pam answered, looking bored.

"One month. You two have one month to show improvement in her. If not, it's the True Death." She got up and walked out.

Pam turned to look at Alexis, then at Eric. "How did you convince Nan to let her live?"

"She refused to kill a human. But she killed one last night, so-"

"No. Jasmine. Hair. No killing."

"Jessica killed him?"

"Jessica. Smells like Jasmine."

Eric sighed and Alexis felt bad. She had done something wrong. She laid her chin on her crossed arms on the table.

"Alexis should have killed him?"

"It's more complex than that," Eric told her. "You are allowed to defend yourself when a human shoots you in the head."

"Hurt. But no killing!"

Eric and Pam were looking at each other with twin images of disgust and amusement.

Alexis realized that she had missed something. "No killing when eating," she said, smiling slowly. She was sure that was the answer. "No killing to play. You are allowed to defend yourself."

Eric grinned at her and she lifted her head. "Eric's happy." She got up and went to the refrigerator.

"No. Come here." She turned in surprise and walked over to him.

He pulled her into his lap and she giggled.

"She's never going to make it in a month," Pam told Eric.

She jumped off of Eric and prowled. She was still hungry. So hungry.

"Alexis?" Eric asked.

"Hungry. Still hungry. So hungry. Starving. Darkness."

Eric and Pam spoke for a few minutes, but Alexis ignored them. She was still so hungry.

Pam left and Eric kissed her. She forgot she was hungry and he took her upstairs to her bedroom and she forgot all about being hungry as they made love.

The next night the hunger gnawed at her until she cried. He tried to distract her but she was too hungry. He brought her food and she drank and had to use every ounce of her strength to stop. Even then, she was hungry. She wanted that moment of death, she craved it with all of her being.

Another night and she refused to eat. Eric brought her some foul thing and made her drink it. She drank and was sick. He gave her more and she kept it down. But her stomach cramped with pain and she knelt, bent over her knees, and groaned from the pain.

"What's wrong with her?" Pam asked, and Alexis tried to tell her that her stomach was being eaten by something.

"Withdrawals," Eric said.

Alexis swam in an ocean of misery and longing.

Three nights later when Eric gave her fake blood, she kept it down the first time and she laid on the floor of the cellar in quiet misery instead of agony.

She woke up the next night feeling strange. She got up and walked up to the kitchen. She stared at the refrigerator that Eric had bought for her. She went into the room where the artifacts should be. They were gone.

"Alexis?"

"Gone," she told him. "They stole them." She remembered the robbers. They had come and beaten her. And now all of her Mormor's artifacts were gone.

"Alexis, I took them to my house. They're safe, they're fine."

She didn't understand what he was saying. All she knew was that her Mormor's beloved artifacts were gone. She cried again and he pulled her against him. Time passed for her in a blur as Eric and Jessica, and sometimes even Pam, spent the nights with her.

Sometimes she almost felt like another person. Like someone from long ago. But the moments were short and passed quickly. Then one night, they wouldn't feed her. Then the next night. Hunger stole over her with ever-increasing intensity.

It was several nights and she complained of the hunger, but Eric continued to ignore it. Then she got up to the banging on the door again. This time, though, Eric got up with her. He led her to the dining room, and Nan and Bill came in. Pam and Jessica followed and sat down, with Sookie coming in behind them.

When she saw Bill, Alexis grinned, "King Bill lost his crown, looked all over the whole damned town. Turned the place upside-down, but never, never found his crown."

Jessica snickered and Pam coughed. Sookie started laughing out loud until Bill sent her a sour look. "Sorry," she muttered, sending Alexis an amused look.

Eric reprimanded her, but Alexis saw his eyes glittering and his lip twitched.

She sniffed the air, smelling nervousness and that irresistible scent that always came with Sookie. Her fangs snapped out, but she closed her mouth and fought the overwhelming urge to eat.

"How are you feeling?" Bill asked her.

Snapping her fangs in with great effort, she said, "Hungry."

"I am sorry about that. But we have to check your self-control. If you can't control yourself, you will have to... Well. Let's just see, shall we?"

He went to the door, giving Nan a disgusted look, and gestured. A naked young man was dragged in, and Alexis felt the overpowering urge to devour him. But she also felt something else, something she couldn't give a name, but that was strong and poignant.

"You are terrifying him," she chastised Bill.

"It makes him smell good, don't you think?" he asked her.

She thought about that. He was right. The man smelled so good she could barely stand it. Somehow, though, it still seemed wrong. But she couldn't figure out why, her mind was sluggish and confused.

"You can defend yourself. Otherwise, no killing."

He raised an eyebrow. "Do you even know what that means?"

"If he shoots you in the head, you can kill him. Are you injured?" she realized she had been rude by not noticing.

He looked at Nan, who looked angry.

"No, thank you, Alexis. I am not injured."

He waved his hand at the terrified man. "Eat. Eat and kill him."

Her fangs snapped out against her will. "No."

"Eat and kill him," Eric commanded her.

Conflict rose up inside her. He was telling her to do something he had told her never to do. Something was wrong. He didn't want her to kill, and she knew it. She stared at him, confused.

"Eat and kill him," Pam told her. Alexis looked away, then at the terrified human. "As your Maker, I command you!" Pam said.

Alexis felt heartbreak rise in her. Not long ago, she wouldn't have even needed to be told to kill this man. She would have done it. Now, though, she knew it was wrong. Not only because Eric had told her so, but because of something inside her own self.

She looked away from Pam, tears running down her face. Her Maker would never forgive her, but she would not do it. If she would not do it because Eric commanded it, not even her Maker could be obeyed.

"You just as well do it," Nan told her. "You are meeting the True Death tonight. Why go hungry?"

Alexis stood miserable and confused, but she took not even a single step toward the terrified human for a long moment. Then a dam broke inside of her. She walked over to him and took his face in her hands.

He struggled and she shushed him. His eyes finally met hers and she took his will into her own. "Relax. Be calm. Find peace within yourself." He stilled. She stroked his cheek.

Then she stood up. "I am ready."

"For what?" Nan demanded.

"I am ready for the True Death. But I will not harm this poor human."

Nan stood up. "She is your responsibility," she said to Pam. "The first sign that she's uncontrollable and she's done, though."

She left and Alexis stood still and silent in the quiet room.

Eric's voice came from behind and above. "Eat, Alexis. Don't kill." He turned her to face him. "You did the right thing."

She couldn't look at him. She felt betrayed in some way that she couldn't understand. She trembled with reaction to something she couldn't place or begin to recognize. He rested his head on hers, but she just wanted to walk away.

Then Pam pulled her away from Eric. She put her hands on Alexis's cheeks. "If you had obeyed either of us in front of Nan, you would have died," she told Alexis. "If we had not commanded you to do it, you would have died."

Hurt welled up in her. Her eyes met Pam's and she didn't try to hide her feelings, though she felt like she should. "You knew it was wrong and you told me to do it anyway. I would have preferred you let me die."

She stepped away from her and walked down to the cellar.

"Alexis," Eric said softly, "wait."

But she didn't.

She lay curled on the floor, thoughts swirling through her head in strange circles. Some of them were hers and not-hers.

"Hey, you okay?"

She sat up, surprised to find Jessica standing on the wooden stairs down to the cellar. "No," she said.

"Well, that's good. I was starting to worry that you were happy all the time. Then I would have to hate you just on principle." When Alexis chuckled slightly, she went on, "See, like that. Hate you."

"But you will pretend you don't. I have more movies than Blockbuster."

She sat down on the ground near Alexis. "They didn't have a choice, you know. Nan wanted you put to the True Death."

Alexis sighed. "I feel so confused. Like my mind is... not there. Or like something is missing or doesn't fit. The only thing I was sure of was that Eric and Pam could be trusted." She tucked her legs up against her and leaned her chin on her knees. "Some nights I feel like someone else. Once in a while, I think I own this house, but then I feel like.. I don't know. Like an intruder into someone else's life. But until now, every part of me was in agreement that I could listen to Eric and Pam and that they would help me in some way."

"They did it to save you from Nan," Jessica told her. She was quiet for a while. "Do you remember anything?"

"Sometimes," Alexis answered, still leaning on her knees. "I remember being afraid of Eric. Why was I afraid of Eric?"

"Because he's scary," Jessica answered. "The guy tortures people and he's a thousand years old. Even Bill and Nan aren't as strong as he is."

Alexis couldn't help it, she laughed. "You make being afraid of him sound so reasonable."

"No one thought you would make it. We all thought you would kill him."

"Doesn't it seem a little backwards that she was willing to kill him to see if I would refuse to kill him? She was just trying to trap me, she doesn't care about that human at all."

"I never thought of that. But from what I've seen of her, that's Nan for you."

"It's all about ratings for her," Bill said, stepping into the room from the kitchen. "I think she hoped she could put you down and film it so that the world would see how she handles rogue vampires. You no doubt disappointed her by passing her disgusting test."

He came down and handed her a bottle of O negative Tru Blood. "Even if you prefer not to eat the human, you should not starve yourself longer. You will grow weak and die."

She took it and drank it, gagging slightly at how flat it was.

He stood watching her. When she was done, he said, "You still have a long way to go, Alexis."

She sighed. "But I am no longer a danger to humans, and that's what matters, am I right?"

"That is the important part from an official standpoint, yes."

They left and Alexis woke up the next night with a weight on her mind and her heart. She heard the alarm beep off and back on. Eric was here.

She walked up the steps slowly, then into the dining room. He stopped and crossed his arms, looking at her.

"You kept a remote to the alarm."

"Yes," he admitted.

"Why?"

"I watched you sleep sometimes."

"Why?"

"You looked beautiful. With your hair spilling across the bed and your face serene."

She wanted that to thaw the hurt in her heart. But she had more questions for him. "You left me in the mine."

"We thought you were dead. We believed you were too drunk to burrow, so we didn't check."

That thawed her slightly. They didn't do it on purpose. "You asked me to do something that you knew was wrong. You betrayed my trust in you."

He didn't offer the excuses she expected. She already knew them, but thought he would express them again anyway.

He flitted across the room to cup her face in his hands. "I am sorry, Alexis." She saw a tear spill down his cheek, red and vibrant.

"You were angry that Pam turned me. You don't want me like this."

He pulled her against him. She wrapped her arms around him and felt her own tears spill.

"When you were human, I felt everything you did. I never had to wonder or guess how you felt about me. But now I... I'm lost without that knowledge."

She pulled away and looked at him. "I told you how I felt before I died."

"But that's when you were human, Alexis. I didn't know how that would change when you were made a vampire. I will never know for sure now."

She ran her hand down his cheek. "Eric, for a person like me, the worst betrayal is to give a command that I cannot bring myself to obey." He made to speak and she shushed him with a finger on his lips. "If I can forgive you for that, surely you can forgive me for having to say how I feel instead of you simply knowing."

He picked her up and flitted upstairs with her, and she was lost in his kisses and his arms. They slept this time in the bed, because he'd had the room light-proofed for her. When she woke, she had all of her memory. Eric sat up beside her and kissed her on the shoulder. He turned her face to his.

"Are you back?" he asked, apparently seeing something in her that had changed.

"I remember everything. And I think I can forgive Mormor." She smiled at him.

He grinned, pulling her into his lap. She grinned back, feeling his erection pressing against her from beneath the sheets.

Alexis leaned forward, her hair falling around them. "In fact," she said, kissing him, "I think I could even appreciate what she gave me, intentional or not."

Four hours later, she was lying on his chest when he rolled her over, sliding his leg between hers and pulling her against him until she was wrapped around him.

"Again?" she asked with a chuckle.

"Not yet," he told her, "impatient little doe."

"Alright," she said, settling into the position slightly.

"I want to do what my father asked of me," he told her. "I want to marry a Swedish princess."

She sobered, blinking at him.

"So," he asked. "Will you?"

"Really?" she asked, not daring to believe it.

He flashed that boyish grin. "I asked your sister first, but you ate her, and now you're all I've got left."

She laughed and pulled his head down for one of those kisses she had come to crave. "Your wish is my command, Prince Ehrik."


	20. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

He watched her tiptoe across the stage, graceful and petite. Behind her, the Count swept swiftly, picking her up and spinning her. He pretended to bite her and she arched backwards, her beautiful, sleek body stretching. She danced away, and 'Dracula' pursued.

What amused Eric was that the damsel in distress, so believable and doe-eyed, was the vampire and the Dracula pursuing her was the human.

"I must thank you, you know." He turned to see Nathaniel beside him. "She is exquisite. Like fine china, so very delicate and believably fragile." He flicked his hand at the stage. "I had never hoped to find a dancer of such grace yet with such a delicate form. There are so few master ballerinas to begin with, but a vampire. Mmm, it is exotic and the people love it. Your wife is a dream on the stage."

"She's my Progeny," Pam said from Eric's other side. "Don't forget that."

Eric grinned.

"What?" she demanded.

"You are proud of her. Admit it."

"Perhaps. Though I still want to fuck her silly."

"Indeed. But then, who does not?" Nathaniel asked. He turned to Eric. "In all of my years, I have not seen better. It's hard to imagine that she went her entire human life without ever gracing a stage. Can you imagine? It's like Beethoven never writing a note."

When it was over, Eric greeted his wife with a kiss. "Are you ready to go?" he asked. They walked to the top of the building and he carried her back to Fangtasia. There, she changed into the dress he had chosen for her, a sleek, sexy affair with a slit that went up the side almost to her waist.

"Really, Eric?" she asked. "Must I?"

He smirked at her. "You look fantastic."

"I look like a street walker," she responded.

He laughed openly. "Nothing you wore could make you look like a streetwalker, little doe. You look like a delicate little morsel." He held his hand out to her. "Pam and I have a surprise for you."

He led her out into Fangtasia. On the dais sat a perfect replica of his father's chair.

"But, Eric-"

"It's a replica, Alexis. Just a replica. For me to sit in while I keep an eye on things." He nodded at Pam. She pulled the cloth off of the chair beside it, which matched it in every detail except it was smaller.

When her eyes met his with a simple, uncomplicated appreciation, he smiled. The next night, when the bar was open, she would sit beside him not in a bar chair, but in a copy of his father's chair. Alexis threw her arms around him and hugged him tight.

"Hey, I helped," Pam objected from the stage. Alexis flitted to her and hugged her, as well.

"Shall we retire for the day?" Eric asked.

When they stepped down and walked across the bar, he told Alexis, "Give Pam a kiss, now. Don't be rude."

"Yes, Eric," his sweet, doe-eyed bride said.

He watched her kiss Pam and smiled. The chairs would wait. It was time that Alexis learned to appreciate her Maker... properly. He was certain that she would learn to appreciate Pam's finer points with a bit of training. Especially once she knew how very, very aroused he got just thinking about it.

When they retired for the day, he told her what he had planned, and how erotic he found it. He was pleased to find that she was, as always, aroused to a fever pitch simply knowing that she was to be allowed to please him.

And he was right. They found the night to be so enjoyable together that the chairs waited, unoccupied, for two entire nights.


End file.
